


(I don’t know if) we are

by heartunsettledsoul, jugandbettsdetectiveagency



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (jason is still dead), Eventual Smut, Kissing for Cover, Mutual Pining, Oh no there's only one bed, Trope fest, and so much more! - Freeform, bughead - Freeform, fake married, sleuthing au, varchie (secondary)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-11 07:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13519470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugandbettsdetectiveagency/pseuds/jugandbettsdetectiveagency
Summary: Doing a favor for their respective best friends, Betty and Jughead are thrown together for the first time in years in the most crazy of circumstances. Will reliving their sleuthing days rekindle a romance that lived just under the surface?Or, Anna & Olivia try to fit as many tropes as possible into one multi-fic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the trope fest, my dears! We are very, very excited to embark on this journey with you all. 
> 
> Jughead's POV will be written by jugandbettsdetectiveagency, Betty's POV by heartunsettledsoul. 
> 
> We hope you enjoy!

“How much do you love me?”

 

“Well that’s not the most promising opener,” chuckles Betty Cooper, pushing back from her desk at work and stretching her arms. There’s a crick in her neck she just can’t shake and the way she has to hold the phone to her ear only accentuates the pain. She loosens her ponytail to press on the pain at the base of her neck fruitlessly and sighs into the phone, running her fingers through her blonde locks.

 

“ _Please?”_ On the other end of the call is Veronica Lodge, touting her patented _please do me a favor_ voice. She is most certainly about to ask Betty to do something she does not remotely have the energy or patience for this week. There’s only so much a girl can take when it’s the third night in a row she’s stuck at the office past 9pm. She was handed two additional clients this week at her tiny yet prestigious public relations firm and getting herself up to date was proving to be more stressful than anticipated; Betty’s worked there for three years already but is still the lowest man—woman—on the totem pole and thus still dealt with majority grunt work. Her dedication to the job (and her thoroughly-ingrained Cooper mindset) meant she still put in 110%, no matter how much time it took.

 

Veronica was a welcome distraction, even if her sweet begging made her best friend wary. “Okay, I’ll bite, V. What’s up?”

 

“To be fair,” Veronica starts. “If you’d actually met me for dinner like we planned, you would already be two glasses of wine in and therefore much more amenable to what I’m about to ask.”

 

Betty rolls her eyes. “Out with it, please.”

 

“So Archie has surprised me with a weekend away to our favorite little summer cabin in the Poconos and got reservations at the Michelin-star restaurant I _absolutely love_ so clearly he’s got something up his sleeve. Whereby something I mean the ring that’s been poorly hidden in his sock drawer for weeks.”

 

Another roll of the eyes. Veronica spent the majority of the past year dropping hints the size of atom bombs about her ring preferences to Archie and regularly hunted for the tiny velvet box in their townhouse until she found it. She called Betty in tears, her words nearly incomprehensible through the happy sobs.

 

Since then, Betty had diverted many a conversation with Veronica away from the topic; her lifelong friendship with Archie means Betty could twist the plan out of him, but she didn’t want to keep secrets from either half of the couple. She has a feeling that delayed favor is about to be cashed in on. “I’m failing to see the favor you need in this situation, Veronica. Unless it’s to awkwardly stalk your romantic dinner to get a photograph of Archie down on one knee so you can have your insta-perfect moment. The answer to that is _no,_ by the way.”

 

“No, no, it’s not that. Although that is an excellent idea, thank you. The issue is that I’m supposed to be doing one of my client-vetting gigs for Daddy and I don’t trust any of the other baby associates to do the kind of digging I need to be done.” Betty sighs, knowing precisely what the next words out of her friend’s mouth would be.

 

Veronica, ever the flatterer, is Hiram Lodge’s go-to schmoozer for any new clients and partners looking to broker deals with Lodge Industries; when Veronica agreed to join the family business, she vowed to take part in only the above-board aspects and tirelessly tried to talk Hiram out of the shady portions of his business. This mainly meant that Veronica spends a lot of time during the business dinners and country club tennis matches and black-tie galas snooping around to make sure the partners were not involved in Hiram’s illegalities.

 

“Will you go for me and spy? Please, Betty?”

 

“Ronnie,” Betty sighs. “I’m exhausted and work is kicking my ass. I really don’t have it in me to whip out the magnifying glass and play Nancy Drew.” Even as she speaks the words aloud, Betty feels her resolve crumbling. She would be lying to herself if the idea of reliving her investigative journalism days didn’t revitalize the tiny corner of her soul that’s been slowly fading the longer she spends under the fluorescent lights of her corporate office building.

 

It’s a terrible idea. But she does have some personal time off stockpiled and if it’s related to Lodge Industries, Betty knows she’s in for a lavish experience. She needs to say no. She isn’t sixteen and playing detective in for the high school newspaper. It isn’t smart, she really, really --

 

“Alright, _fine_. What do you need me to do?”

 

Veronica’s squeal of delight makes her hold the phone away from her ear, but Betty can’t fight the smile the breaks across her face. Work _is_ exhausting and she could use a break, or if not a break, than at least a thorough distraction—lest the bags under her eyes grown any more pronounced, reminds the voice in the back of her mind that sounds suspiciously like her mother.

 

Her friend rambles off the details of what she needs Betty to do: there’s a resort and spa in the suburbs that Hiram is looking to buy majority shares in but in the initial meeting with one of the managers, Veronica got a “seriously sketchy vibe.” Veronica was scheduled to visit the resort for mutual schmoozing, plus her own personal task of vetting the manager, and now Betty would go in her stead.

 

“I’m telling you, B, that bitch has something in her back pocket and I don’t know if it’s just her or if it’s part of something even shadier that my father’s doing. Regardless, you just have to do some of your patented Betty Cooper sleuthing to figure out which it is. Just show up as my guest, enjoy the free spa services, and _maybe_ break into the manager’s office to copy her hard drive and any paperwork. Easy as pie!”

 

Maybe not _easy as pie,_ but it didn’t seem like too awful of a way to spend a weekend, Betty thinks.

.

.

.

As she packs her overnight bag several days later, Betty has to put her phone on mute to block the steady stream of emails landing in her inbox. She has _a lot_ of unused vacation days and her boss is not taking the absence of her go-to helper monkey very well. Betty enjoys her job—or she _sort of_ likes it, sometimes—but her people-pleasing nature had come back to truly bite her in the ass for the first time. The firm depends on her for grunt work, but when they realized the extent of her work ethic, they added a lot more of the important responsibilities to her plate. Betty is busy to to the point where she feels like she constantly has to be “on,” constantly running like the Energizer Bunny, so as to not ruin her career, not break down, no matter how frustrating she finds it all, or how much she almost _wants_ to just break down.

 

But she put her foot down with this; she’s taken Friday as a personal day, worked extra late Thursday to finish the next week’s press releases and articles early, and left a detailed list for her immediate team of what to do or who to contact for each of her open work items. To her immense irritation, Betty’s boss is still emailing her every half hour with requests and questions.

 

She clears the pop-up notifications on her phone screen, leaving just the background photo of her and Veronica taking a selfie at the Lodge’s beach house the prior summer. The image makes her smile but there’s a slight pang when Betty thinks about the reason she’s doing this favor for Veronica in the first place. She doesn’t quite know why—Archie and Veronica have been together for almost as long as Betty’s known Veronica, so she isn’t exactly expecting her best friend to drift away into a happy, engaged bliss and leave her high and dry.

 

Ever since Veronica waltzed—quite literally—into their lives in Riverdale during sophomore year of high school, she and Betty were inseparable, their fierce friendship coming at a time when Betty most needed a strong female relationship. It was the first true friendship of the kind for Betty, who only ever had her older sister Polly, or her life-long friendship with Archie. Until Veronica, Betty never knew the true pleasure of staying up all night to gossip and share fears, of shopping with someone who wouldn’t critique every piece of clothing on her body, or of the feminine shoulder to cry on when she thought she may never find love.

 

Though Betty had long-harbored feelings for Archie after living nextdoor for their entire lives, she was thankfully past her school-girl crush by the time Archie and Veronica became attached at the hip—and lips; Betty knew she was more in love with the idea of being with her childhood best friend than she actually was in love with Archie.

 

Some small part of her, though, really wishes she had someone who looked at her the way Archie looks at Veronica, or even that any of her past relationships had been anywhere near as genuine as the love between her two best friends. There’s never been an intense spark of chemistry or a feeling of complete, safe happiness with any of the boys from college or the endless string of Wall Street-ers Veronica throws her way. No one has made her feel comfortable enough to take off her Cooper smile and PR sheen; her heart aches in longing for something she’s never even felt.

 

The drive out of the city and into the lush suburbs leaves Betty with far too much time in her own head. She’s mentally re-lived all of high school and the first two years of college—every idiotic mistake, moments where she fails to live up to her Cooper standards, all the guys that said she too untouchably perfect to be with—when she finally pulls into the immaculately landscaped parking lot of Blue Harbor Resort & Spa. At this point, Betty desperately needs of some mindless spa time, maybe a stiff drink or two (or three), and some good old fashioned distraction-by-sleuthing.

 

Happy to start reliving the more enjoyable parts of her high school experience, Betty tightens her ponytail and sets off in search of whatever the hell is going on there.

.

.

.

Despite the eighty-degree heat, Jughead is grateful to finally step back out onto the sidewalk.

 

He’s been encased in a glass room, that felt windowless despite the panoramic view of the city, for the past several hours with all the attention focused solely on one thing: him.

 

It’s not that he wasn’t grateful for the event, or even for the alignment of opportunities that led him to being watched like a goldfish in a tank for the better part of the day. In fact, he’s worked _hard_ to get to this specific point in time, tirelessly working to finish his manuscript while simultaneously making sure his dad had enough to pay their bills, to stock their cupboards, and (eventually) that he had somewhere safe- _ish_ to sleep during his formative years. It’s taken the majority of his college years and a glowing email of acceptance from _HarperCollins_ to get himself to the point where he can even acknowledge that he’s deserving of a little good fortune—of some success.

 

But that doesn’t mean that he’s accustomed to all the things that accompany the publication of his novel.

 

The advance had been the first shock to Jughead’s system. Sure, times had been tougher in the past, but old habits and student loans die hard. He’d developed a skill for saving, only spending what was necessary and sticking to a meticulously planned budget. After all, there weren’t many diners outside Riverdale that would surreptitiously slide your dollar bills back towards you after you’d finished your fries.

 

Jughead thought that having a little extra money in the bank would have filled him with long overdue relief. Instead, it only served to put him on edge.

 

Staring at that number, with more zeros than he had ever been in possession of, pressed a heavy weight in the centre of his chest. Before he knew it Jughead had found himself with his head between his knees and a light sheen across his forehead, staring down at the suspicious dark stain he’d never been able to get out of his cheap, downtown apartment’s carpet.

 

Money had always been so desirable to him as a kid; it was something he could see everywhere—could see the benefits of—but never got to indulge in. He saw the lengths his dad had gone to to get enough cash, and all the things he thought that could potentially bring him (knowing it never could, not really). Ultimately, that endeavour had landed Jughead in a janitor's closet before his sixteenth birthday, sharing space with a moth-eaten sleeping bag and some out of date canned goods.

 

So yeah, Jughead _desired_ money, but the relationship was nothing if not bitter.

 

He’d called Archie when he could get his breath back enough to stop the static clouding his eyes. If there was anyone that would immediately see the good in the situation it would be Archie.

 

This much, he’d been right about. Archie had cheered over the phone, suggested a night of celebratory pizza and video games—on him—and hung up with very little ceremony, barely indulging Jughead’s pity party except to say something along the lines of, _“You deserve this, bro. Don’t get all stuck in your head about it.”_

 

Jughead wasn’t usually one for taking pearls of wisdom from the oyster that was Archie Andrews, but it was the kick in the ass he’d needed to at least celebrate his accomplishments for now.

 

(There’d been more panicked phone calls when _Underneath the Maple Tree_ found home a few places in on the _New York Times Bestsellers List_ , and the day that the check he’d sent home to FP returned uncashed, but they’d worked through it.)

 

Jughead unbuttons a few more of the buttons on his crisp dress shirt as he makes his way towards the subway, pushing the already-rolled sleeves further up his elbows. The press event had been long and tiring, a drawn out reminder of a world that seemed to be accommodating him despite the fact he felt like he had the word _imposter_ stamped across his forehead, and he was looking forward to the comfort of his quiet apartment.

 

He’s a few feet away from the steps leading underground when his pocket begins to buzz. He pulls his phone out, barely reading Archie’s name on the screen before he’s swiping to answer the call.

 

“Hey, Arch. What’s up?” he greets casually, rocking back on his heels as he leans against the railing.

 

“What makes you think something’s up?” comes Archie’s suspicious reply. Jughead smirks, shaking his head at his long term friend’s lack of stealth.

 

“That reply,” he chuckles. “What is it?”

 

Archie dodges his question with all the subtlety of a cliff face. “Hey, that press thing was today, right? How’d it go?” he tries instead, and Jughead can already picture the way he’s pacing around his living room, one hand rubbing nervously at the back of his neck.

 

“It was the biggest thrill of my life,” Jughead deadpans. “Come on, what gives?” He hears Archie’s intake of breath over the line.

 

“Okay, so you know how I’ve kind of been planning on proposing to Ronnie,” he begins, like it hasn’t managed to hijack ninety percent of their conversations over the last few months. Jughead doesn’t reply, instead just waiting for him to continue. “Well, I’m gonna do it. This weekend.”

 

Jughead grins, the barely concealed excitement in Archie’s tone settling a warmth in his stomach. “That’s great, dude. Congrats,” he congratulates heartily.

 

“Thanks. But, there’s a slight problem.” Jughead’s brow furrows of its own accord.

 

“If you’re worried about the element of surprise I think it’s safe to say that that ship sailed the day Veronica started leaving _Tiffany’s_ catalogues in strategic locations around your apartment,” Jughead jokes, trying to lighten the tone.

 

“Yeah, yeah. But I’m pretty sure she knows this weekend is _the_ weekend,” Archie pauses in his fretting to chide affectionately. “Which is why she’s agreed to come away with me to this cabin she loves so much, even though she had a prior engagement, because I could only get a booking this weekend. I didn’t want to have to wait until the new year.”

 

Jughead suddenly has a feeling he knows where this is going. “What kind of prior engagement?” he asks slowly. Archie lets out a nervous chuckle.

 

“Ronnie likes to check on all the proposed businesses Mr. Lodge wants to invest in—something about making sure everything is above board with her own eyes. Anyway, she was supposed to go to this hotel spa thing in the suburbs this weekend to check it out. Apparently she has a ‘bad feeling’,” he explains with audible air quotes. “And I was _thinking_ …”

 

“Arch…” Jughead trails off warily. He doesn’t have to say anymore for Archie to understand how big a favor he’s asking of his friend.

 

“Come on, bro, it’ll be great! It’s a free weekend away at a spa, I’m not exactly sending you into the pits of hell.” Jughead scoffs. _Not far off_. “And you were practically a full-on detective when we were in high school. I thought you’d jump at the chance to do some investigating again.” He pauses, and Jughead can sense the closing argument is coming up.

 

“I just know that she’s disregarding her job for my plans, and I thought it’d be nice if when we got back she found out that I had her covered and there was nothing to worry about—do something nice for her.”

 

“You’re _proposing_ to her. I think you’ve already hit capacity on good deeds for Veronica on this particular weekend,” Jughead says sarcastically, trying to ignore the way his palms are growing increasingly damp. He knows he’s two seconds away from caving, unable to deny the guy who was practically his brother, who’d done so much for him, anything. Even if it would make him a few leaps past uncomfortable.

 

“Then it can be your wedding gift to us!” Archie always had a way of being so genuine in his half-formed plans to help people that Jughead knows by now that any attempt at resistance will be futile—it doesn’t stop him from giving it one last try.

 

“But, really, a fancy new spa resort? Me? I’ll stick out like a sore thumb,” Jughead whines, his resolve creaking as it prepares to give way under the first crack.

 

Archie sighs, his tone shifting from sweet pleading to gentle chastisement. “Come on, Jug, we were working past this. You’re the only one who thinks you don’t fit in in your life anymore. This isn’t Riverdale and you’re not the kid from the Southside. You’re a bestselling author!” Archie cheers buoyantly, prising a laugh from Jughead. “I’ll owe you big time. Although, like I said you would be getting an all expenses paid holiday, so…” he sing-songs.

 

Jughead runs a hand through his increasingly sweaty hair and sighs, looking up at the towering buildings around him. Doing more things to reward himself, that’s what he said he’d work on. Not punishing himself for the life he’d once lived.

 

“Just tell me what I have to do.”

.

.

.

Blue Harbor Resort & Spa looks exactly as Jughead thought it would upon arrival, right down to the mahogany furniture and chrome accents. There’s a generally ‘zen’ air about the clientele drifting through the immaculately cleaned lobby, and he finds himself consciously trying to lower his shoulders from where they’d crept around his ears, forcing the tension to leave his back.

 

Every move he makes has him feeling like someone is going to stop him, look him up and down (even though he’s wearing one of the more expensive shirts his agent had insisted he buy for the launch party and his shiniest pair of dress shoes) and tell him to leave the premises.

 

But no one pays him any mind as he adjusts the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder and tries to take in his surroundings as innocuously as possible.

 

His steps carry him towards an empty reception desk, which is all it takes to get him to realise that Veronica is probably going to find out about his temporary position as her fact checker sooner rather than later, when the hotel calls to confirm he’s not just some stray trying to cash in on a free holiday.

 

He’s tapping his fingers against the wood when a shiny plaque catches his eye on the door to his right, expertly engraved with the word ‘ _Manager_ ’.

 

Archie hadn’t been very forthcoming with the specifics when he’d been explaining what Jughead needed to do upon his arrival, but he’d managed to garner the general gist: find dirt.

 

With a quick glance in all directions, Jughead edges towards the door, sending up a silent prayer in thank you when the handle gives under his hand and he’s slipping inside. The room is minimalist, the same polished wood and metal theme carrying on into the office. Jughead stands stationary for a moment, at a loss as to where to begin, before deciding the filing cabinet behind the desk might be his best bet. The second draw down turns out to be locked, immediately alerting his senses, and he turns to search the desk for a key.

 

He’s elbows deep in documents when the sound of the door clicking open freezes him in place.

 

Jughead looks up sharply, his eyes meeting a green gaze that he hasn’t seen in far too long. The woman in question stares back, her blonde ponytail still swinging from her entrance, lips parting in shock.

 

Betty Cooper takes a step towards him, squinting in the low light as if to confirm he really is who she thinks he is. “Jughead?”

 

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the amazing reception the first chapter got. We're both so overwhelmed by and appreciative of your lovely comments and kudos, and we hope you enjoy this next instalment just as much!

Jughead must have been staring at Betty in bewilderment for longer than he thinks, because her surprise shifts into something closer to awkwardness as she looks down and says, “Um, it’s Betty. Betty Cooper, from Riverdale,” uncertainty creeping into her voice.

 

That tugs the corners of his lips into the start of an amused smile because _as if_ he could ever forget who Betty Cooper is.

 

She’s changed since he last saw her (through the window in Archie’s old bedroom the Thanksgiving before last). Her hair is darker, longer, and he can’t help but notice the swelling curve of her hips, a far cry from the figure he remembers swathed in pastel cardigans. A feeling suspiciously close to fluttering stirs in the pit of his stomach and Jughead instantly curses the metaphorical butterflies.

 

“Yeah, I know it’s you, Betty,” he replies gently, unable to stop his smile from spreading at the faint blush that blooms across her cheeks. Betty rearranges her features to match his, her grin shy but genuine. Jughead had forgotten just how pretty she was, and he can already tell that the back of his neck is flushing red—he hates how much he instantly feels like his teenage self all over again.

 

He and Betty had been friends once; not that he ever considers there to be a moment when they _stopped_ being friendly. It’s just that there came a day when they spent considerably less time together, until she was just a girl through his best friend’s window, a girl that was sometimes mentioned perchance during conversations with his said friend’s girlfriend. It didn’t help that after graduation she packed up and moved to the other side of the country, reducing any chance for a casual run-in to zero. Sometimes he’d catch the swing of a golden ponytail disappearing around a corner and wonder what it was Betty was doing in that moment.

 

She does feature in some of the more fond memories of his youth, however. He recalls late afternoons spent in the Blue & Gold office, putting the finishing touches on whatever article Betty would surely pick apart anyway, grinning at her when she’d send a disapproving look towards his sneakers propped up on the corner of her desk; she’d never move them away, though. Then there were the evenings when they’d finish up early and head to Pop’s, where she’d treat him to extra toppings on his fries and let him scoop the dregs of melting ice cream out of her milkshake glass.

 

There was something about Betty’s busyness that had always enamoured him—she was a constant machine of activity, especially towards the end of their high school years. She seemed to schedule herself with a military precision (a trait he recognised to be inherited from her rather imposing mother), and while he’d found her passed out on the old plaid couch in the office numerous times, or mainlining coffee as she breezed past him, he could tell that Betty thrived on her rising number of extracurriculars.

 

It developed into something of a catch-22 for him, because he might be able to attribute Betty’s drive for her duties to forcing his own head out of his ass when it came to addressing projects he just didn’t have the mental capacity to face sometimes. But, it also meant that their time together decreased until, by the time they graduated, he could compare their acquaintance simply to two ships passing in the night.

 

(He knows he’s being particularly dramatic with that one, but there was always something about Betty that brought out his theatrical side. And if he’s being even more honest with himself, he knows _exactly_ why the blonde busybody before him was able to provoke such a side, why she’s _still_ causing those feelings he oh-so-healthily repressed to rise once more.)

 

Jughead had very nearly pulled the tab on that emotional grenade just before they left for college, the confession bubbling on the tip of his tongue as they both waited for Veronica to stop fussing with Archie’s tie and come and join them for one last group picture.

 

Maybe it was the foreboding that had taken to settling around his thoughts of the future, or the fact that Betty had her hair down around her shoulders, bright summer sunlight catching the silken strands and making them appear glowing. Whatever it was, Jughead distinctly remembers taking a deep breath in before going to speak.

 

_“Betty, I—” She turned to face him and Jughead’s throat ran dry. He swallowed thickly a couple of times, eyes greedily drinking in the jubilant look she was giving him._

 

_“What is it?” she asked, glancing away briefly to laugh at the utterly disgruntled expression on Archie’s face as Veronica licked her thumb to smooth down his fly-aways._

 

_“I can’t believe this is it,” he said instead by way of stalling, wishing his nerve was as high as his heart rate._

 

_“I know. Everything is going to be so different now.” Her eyes find nothing in particular in the distance. “I can’t wait to just get out of here, start over, you know? It’s definitely about time for ‘new beginnings’,” Betty said softly, quoting the line that spanned all the college brochures they’d spent months reading. “Leave this all behind.”_

 

_Instinctively, Jughead took a small step away from her. It was selfish of him to ever think telling her of his lingering feelings would be a good idea. Even if by some miracle she reciprocated, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she’d end up resenting the reminder he’d be. He knew the effort Betty had put into making sure the letter that came from Stanford was congratulatory—why would she want to take anything with her when she’d been nothing but determined to get away?_

 

_He posed for the picture with his hand hovering just above her shoulder._

 

Jughead is flooded with a cocktail of emotions that leave a bitter taste in his mouth. He can feel that his smile has dropped even though his face has started to feel a bit numb.

 

“What are you doing here?” It comes out a fraction sharper than he’d intended, and he winces as Betty’s smile slowly begins to fade too.

 

“I could ask you the same question,” she challenges, lifting a single eyebrow in a move that’s so familiar it only serves to worsen Jughead’s increasingly sour mood.

 

When it’s clear Betty isn’t going to break first, Jughead sighs. “Archie called me the other day and asked me to come here as a favour for Veronica—”

 

“To relive your sleuthing days and find out if there’s anything untoward going on here,” she finishes with a gleam in her eyes, folding her arms across her chest.

 

Jughead runs a hand through his hair, acutely aware that his beanie is stowed just inside the zipped pocket of his duffel, within easy reach. “That’s pretty much the long and short of it,” he agrees with a small huff of a laugh, peeking up at her from under the disrupted hair now falling in his eyes.

 

“You look good, Jug,” Betty murmurs and he feels himself go hot all over. “I saw your book on the _Bestsellers List_ , congratulations,” she continues before he can even address let alone return her compliment.

 

“Yeah, thanks,” he replies lamely, cursing his inability to carry any weight in this conversation with at least a little eloquence. Jughead isn’t sure he wants to ask her if she’s read it; his shoulders have risen again, of their own accord. “Um, Veronica mentioned you’re in PR?” he says after a stretch of silence, attempting to shift the conversation towards her. He hopes he’s remembered right, a hazy memory floating towards the forefront of his mind.

 

Betty lifts a hand to smooth the top of her ponytail, pressing her lips together as she nods. “Yep, I am.”

 

Talking to Betty used to be as natural as breathing, and yet Jughead now finds himself scrambling for the right words to form a simple sentence. He pauses for a second to realize he’s getting stuck in his own head and begins to count backwards from ten—a technique he’s been utilising a lot lately—to bring himself back.

 

“So, this place is fancy, huh?” Betty starts, casting her gaze around the room. “I’ll say this for the Lodges: they certainly know how to pick ‘em,” she intones with a deft roll of her eyes.

 

“You know what they say about magpies and shiny things,” Jughead jokes, tapping the toe of his shoe against a mirrored leg of the coffee table nearby.

He’s not even looking at her anymore but he can still feel the wide-eyed sincerity of her gaze upon the side of his face, causing tiny pinpricks to erupt over his skin. “Archie and Veronica really need to learn to communicate better if they’re going to nail this wedded bliss thing,” he mutters. He knows he’s not being his most charming, but he can’t seem to stop the reversion into his snippy, teenage self that’s happening without his permission.

 

Luckily, Betty doesn’t seem to take his churlish words to heart. “I don’t know, Jones. This might have worked out in our favour; we made a pretty good duo back in the day,” she teases, taking a step towards him, fingers trailing over the edge of the desk. “Many a mystery came to light thanks to our investigative prowess,” she tilts her chin upwards, daring him to challenge her.

 

“Ah, yes,” Jughead begins, flicking his eyes to the ceiling with a smirk, stuffing his hands in the front pocket of his pants. “The great uncovering of who _really_ stole all the board markers from the supply closet. I’m still waiting on the knighthood,” he quips with a smirk.

 

A laugh bursts from her quirked lips and his heartbeat stutters. “Okay, so they weren’t _all_ worthy of the front page but we did some good work! Hey, we found out who was stealing all those dogs just so they could collect the founders fee,” she recalls excitedly, her green eyes brightening with remembrance. “And what the mayor’s office was actually doing with all that parking fine money, and we helped with…” she pauses, looking up at him from beneath her lashes, her teeth catching the corner of her lip in hesitation. “Jason,” she finishes quietly.

 

Jughead clears his throat. “How’s Polly doing these days?” he asks after a somber moment, fighting the instinct to reach out and lift her face with a finger under her dipped chin. He doesn’t have to because a second later Betty’s straightening her shoulders and taking a big breath, something he’s familiar with when he wants to clear his thoughts.

 

“She’s good. The twins are so big now, I almost can’t believe it.” There’s a genuine happiness to her words now and the tense knot in Jughead’s stomach loosens some. “You don’t go home much?” she inquires innocently, so much so that Jughead believes it’s actually a question and not just a statement.

 

Betty’s schedule began to pick up around the time that things got particularly bad between Jughead and his father, the hang outs between him, her, and Archie losing their third member more often than not. She knew things were hard for him—saw him move in with Archie a little into sophomore year—but never pried beyond those extra turns paying their diner bills and a gentle hand on his arm on the days when the bags beneath his eyes became particularly pronounced. He knew that Betty would always be there to lend a listening ear if he’d wanted, but sharing too much of that part of his life felt almost like he was tainting something else.

 

“No, not really,” is all he says now, holding her gaze steady. She lifts a hand slowly, reaching for him.

 

The door to the office swings open once more and a perfectly manicured woman walks through, steps faltering when she sees the room is unexpectedly occupied.

 

“What are you doing in here? Who are you?” she asks sharply, eyes darting between the two of them.

 

For all his literary eloquence (or so he’s been told), Jughead can do nothing but let his mouth hang open in what he assumes must be a very unattractive manner, eyes panicked, and mind utterly blank. Upon seeing his floundering, Betty steps forward, an eerily familiar Cooper grin gracing her features.

 

“Hello, I’m—” she stumbles for a moment, hand half raised to shake the woman’s hand. “M-mrs Andrews, and this is my husband,” she hurries. Jughead’s stomach bottoms out. _Husband? What is she doing? And ‘Andrews’?_ He can’t help the bitter thought that pervades his mind that it _figures_ the words ‘husband’ and ‘Andrews’ still go together instinctually in Betty’s mind. Jughead had been aware of Betty’s crush on their friend growing up, always waiting for the day when Archie would wake up and realize how amazing this girl was, that then it’d all be over. Somewhere beyond his thoughts, Betty’s still talking.

 

“Our close friend, Veronica Lodge, had an unexpected engagement and was unable to make the trip so she very graciously let us have the booking instead. We definitely need a break from the city, don’t we, honey?” she tosses over her shoulder, not even leaving a gap for Jughead to try and answer before she’s continuing. “She told us to find the manager when we arrived. I’m sorry if we’re intruding, it’s just that there was no one on the desk when we got here.” Jughead can’t tell if it’s just him, or some trick of the stark lighting, but he swears Betty’s smile is starting to look slightly sinister.

 

The manager regards them both warily for a while longer, dark-lined eyes narrowing, and Jughead thinks that his weekend just got that much longer. If he’s going to get through this he’s going to have to get over himself, double down on his repression, and figure out how to spend an entire weekend with the girl he let get away.

.

.

.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she snaps.

 

The manager’s heels click on the floor as she stalks off toward the front lobby, presumably to put in a phone call to Veronica or her father.

 

Betty is still entirely flustered—both by being caught by the manager and by the unexpected run-in with Jughead Jones, of all people—but maintains a clear enough head to think that texting a warning to Veronica might be a good idea.

 

One quick, _if the resort calls about a Mr. & Mrs. Andrews staying under your name, roll with it _ later, and Betty is back to flushing under the intense stare from Jughead. Still somewhat embarrassed by her assumption that he didn’t recognize her, Betty fixes her gaze somewhere to the left of his ear. The tiny Alice-voice in her brain tells her she’s put on too much weight for anyone to recognize her, her face is much rounder, hair less blonde, and she’s just changed so _much_ since she was a frightened, perfectionist teenager. (Or she hopes has, anyway.)

 

The warm smile he’d worn upon realizing it was her sent a surprising tingle of happiness down her spine; she’d made _Jughead Jones blush._

 

Betty can’t quite remember when she last saw Jughead, but it’s been at least since freshman year of college that they’d had a conversation with any sort of importance. Her unceremonious fleeing to California for college certainly hadn’t helped in that department; it was difficult enough to keep ties with Veronica and Archie, let alone anyone she’d drifted from prior to graduation.

 

The de-evolution of their friendship, she acknowledges, had a lot to do with how Betty threw herself into every single extracurricular possible during the second half of their tenure at Riverdale High. Her family never exactly bounced back from Polly’s unexpected pregnancy—nevermind that the father was subsequently murdered—and once Betty realized her parents’ concentrated efforts of perfection fell solely to their youngest daughter, she knew she needed to get as far away as possible.

 

Once she set her sights on Stanford, Betty set forth to break whatever record existed for resume-padding. If she wasn’t at Riverdale Vixens practice or copyediting the week’s issue of the Blue & Gold with Jughead, Betty was tutoring elementary school students or volunteering at the local soup kitchen or helping Veronica run for student body president. Betty hadn’t intentionally meant to stop spending so much time with Jughead, it just seemed to happen naturally. Where once they would have gone for burgers and milkshakes at Pop’s after finishing articles, Betty eventually dashed out of the office to continue her to-do list. The influx of student writers on staff their senior year meant Betty delegated much of the work—as was her prerogative as editor—and they just ...drifted.

 

There’s a photograph of them at graduation, an outtake really, where the two have mortar boards in hand and are waiting for their respective best friends to hurry the hell up. Betty is smiling at something out of frame, likely Veronica fixing Archie’s tie, and Jughead is looking down at her affectionately, his arm preemptively slung over her shoulder for the posed group shot. However much time they _didn’t_ spend together during their final year, there was always an easy, good-natured camaraderie between the two of them.

 

(Betty printed that photo and pinned it to her corkboard for all of college. She’d be lying to say looking at the image didn’t make her heart ache in nostalgia. Nostalgia for what, she couldn’t quite say. But she just loved the way Jughead is looking at her in that picture.)

 

It’s a very different look from the one he’s giving her right now. In this moment, Jughead is entirely unreadable, but the glint in his eyes sends a jolt through her. He has certainly filled out in the years that have passed: lithe muscles are covered by a dress shirt that high school Jughead wouldn’t have been caught dead in and the angular cut of his jaw is a much sharper than memory serves. The same lock of dark hair flops over his forehead and she tries not to watch as his fingers run through it in something like frustration. His boyish good looks have definitely evolved into full-blown sex appeal.

 

“Um,” she starts hesitantly, unsure of how to address what’s just happened.

 

“So,” he responds. There’s mirth in his voice and the glint in his eyes sparkles with laughter. “ _Mrs. Andrews,_ huh?”

 

Her jaw drops in surprise for a moment before she turns defensive. “Well, it’s not like I want her to know our real names in case we get figured out?”

 

Jughead chuckles and rolls his eyes. “Right, right, so you thought you’d throw Archie under the bus instead. Excellent plan, Betty.”

 

“It’s the first thing I thought of!” She’s definitely flustered again and Jughead _definitely_ notices.

 

“I just didn’t realize we time traveled back to the tenth grade when you still wanted to marry Archie,” teases Jughead. Betty blushes and silently curses herself for the reaction. She wants to say something about their friends’ impending engagement being an influencer in her quickfire cover story, but her tongue appears to be tied. And it seems a little defensive.

 

She really dislikes dwelling on her years spent pining over a best friend that didn’t want her back, especially not once she realized she was more in favor of Archie-as-her-boyfriend in theory than in practice. To his credit, Jughead realizes he touched a nerve and switches tactics. “How are we supposed to check in with fake names now, Mrs. Andrews? Better yet, if you’re supposed to be a patsy, how were you planning to check in as Veronica Lodge?”

 

Betty clears her throat self-consciously. It’s a wonder how quickly you can be made to feel like a teenager again when someone from your past appears out of the blue. Jughead was always quick to tease or throw sarcastic comments at her and she _used_ to be able to keep up. With her PR-approved veneer, she’s a bit out of practice. “I, uh, didn’t think that far ahead, actually.”

 

He laughs again, smiling at her, and something in her stomach flip-flops a little. “You’ve lost your touch, Cooper,” he sighs. “You used to be much better at snooping in high school.”

 

Her spark of defiance flames into a confusing blend of petulance and outrage. “Well, what was your tactic going to be?” Jughead’s laughter ceases. “And excuse me, that was investigative journalism and you know it. _Snooping_ is reserved for eavesdropping on older siblings and pawing through girls’ underwear drawers.”

 

“Did you steal a lot of panties in your day as a cheerleader, Betts?”

 

“Oh gross, Jug,” Betty can feel the blush crawl up her neck, both from the insinuation and the use of her nickname. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

 

The teasing grin on his face slowly grows into a full-blown smirk. “Didn’t mean you were bad at snooping or didn’t mean that you just gave me a reminder of what you looked like in a cheerleading skirt?”

 

Betty doesn’t get a chance to bite back with a retort—after all, _he_ brought up Betty’s cheerleader past—because the manager chooses that exact moment to return. She appraises them with narrowed eyes but confirms that they are, in fact, approved as guests of the Lodge family. As she is ushering them out of her office, Betty leans into Jughead’s ear, doing her best to keep her breathing even, and whispers, “For the record, you can’t take shots at my sleuthing capabilities when I’m the one that caught you with your hand in the proverbial cookie jar and subsequently saved your ass.”

 

She smirks, satisfied with her comeback, until Jughead ducks his head into her ear from his position behind her in the hallway. He utters only two words and she’s frustrated to admit that the proximity of his breath on the back of her neck sends a shockwave through her. “Touché, Cooper.”

 

Something suspiciously like butterflies are alight in the pit of her stomach. It’s as though Betty is on the edge of seventeen again, lost in her world of expected perfection and clinging to the warmth and safety of her friendship with Jughead. They’ve grown older, grown apart, but it feels like nothing has changed; they could easily be back in the Blue & Gold office at Riverdale High and a barrage of emotions Betty kept carefully tamped down for years come bubbling to the surface.

 

On impulse, she grabs at Jughead’s free hand and rests it on her shoulder. _For cover,_ she tells herself, and “We’re supposed to be married,” she whispers in response to Jughead’s raised eyebrow. He shrugs and runs the pad of his thumb across the base of Betty’s neck; it’s all she can do to not list into the warm solidity of his chest after they take room keys from the thoroughly pissed off manager and escape into the elevator. No one is there to watch them pretend, but Jughead’s hand doesn’t leave her shoulder. Instead it slips down to the small of her back as he guides her through the elevator doors and down the hall to their—Veronica’s—suite.

 

Even the _door_ to the suite looks expensive. Betty wouldn’t be surprised if the gilded number was painted in real liquid gold. When she swings the door open, Betty is first taken aback by the enormous, spa-like bathroom immediately to her left. She drops her large tote in shock and gapes at chrome finishes, triple-headed waterfall shower, and fluffy towels that definitely were leaps and bounds beyond the matching Target set in her own apartment.

 

From behind her, Jughead lets out a low whistle as he takes in the rest of the exorbitant decor. “This is insane,” he breathes, more to himself than to Betty, who is still distracted by the size of the shower. The impressed air in his voice drops quickly, though, when he disappears from her peripheral and Betty hears a muttered _“fuck.”_

 

Concerned, she follows him further into the room and follows his gaze. Jughead’s eyes are trained on the immaculately prepared king bed in front of them, covered in what looks like a silk comforter and pillows. For only a moment, Betty's confusion lingers. And then it dawns on her: they’re play-actings as Mr. & Mrs. Andrews and married couples tend to not have as many qualms over sharing a bed as an estranged pair of childhood friends do.

 

Betty is now hyper aware of the flutterings in her stomach and her physical appreciation for full-grown Jughead Jones.

 

“Fuck,” she echoes.

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the authors would apologize for the delay between updates, but the word sorry has lost all meaning after they spent an entire month apologizing profusely to each other for taking so long to write their respective halves. they hope you enjoy this, nonetheless!

Something suspiciously like excitement mixed with dread runs down Betty’s spine. She is most certainly  _ not  _ thinking about what it might be like to share a bed with Jughead, platonically sleeping or otherwise. 

 

With an exasperated sigh, Jughead runs a hand through his messy hair and it’s only then that Betty notices the distinct absence of the crown-shaped beanie she knew so well through their entire adolescence together. He doesn’t say anything beyond the muttered swear that brought her into the room to begin with and Betty starts to become too aware of the awkwardness of this situation. It feels  _ good  _ to see Jughead again, like something she couldn’t put a name to clicked back into place the moment they started jibing at each other. But there  _ is _ the elephant in the room that is the years since they've been as close as they once were.

 

She feels as light and innocent as their teenage selves, but simultaneously notices the heavy fatigue of the lives they’ve lived in the years since high school. A flash of memory cuts through the tension: toothy grins and hands sticky with smores from summers “camping” in the Andrews’ backyard. Each of them pretended like they weren’t hiding from heavier things at play in their respective homes—Archie’s parents were fighting more and more often, Jughead couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen his mother without tears in her eyes, and Betty was coming to understand the reality of the crushing weight of her parents’ expectations. The trio spent the majority of one summer sleeping in tents underneath the large oak tree with the tire swing they’d begun to outgrow. They talked through their fears of growing up, shared ridiculous stories about the ghosts that supposedly haunted Thornhill, pooled all their spare change and crumpled bills on Pop’s takeout, and lived out the last vestiges of their childhood together. 

 

Betty smiles at the memory; it may have been years since she and Jughead spent time with each other, but there’s a camaraderie that only comes from suffering puberty together. “Come on, Jug,” she chirps. “All that’s missing is the giant stack of comics and Archie’s tire swing.” She’s nothing if not willing to find the best in every situation. 

 

Jughead, however, is still as cynical as ever. He raises an eyebrow at her in confusion before tossing his bag onto the overstuffed armchair and starting to dig through side pockets in search of something. A soft ping of recognition reverberates through Betty when she sees his hand clench around something dark gray and knitted. 

 

“We’ve had sleepovers before, Jughead,” Betty reminds him. Some of the tension in his shoulders loosened after locating his beanie, but he stiffens immediately at her words. 

 

“Oh, go— I, uh, I mean,” Jughead stutters spectacularly. His face is beet red and Betty feels her own cheeks flush again at  _ why  _ he’s probably blushing. When he sets his jaw and takes a deep breath, Betty watches the tendons in his neck flex in fascination. 

 

He clears his throat. “It’s fine, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Betty. This chair looks solid enough, and definitely more comfortable than the one in my apartment that I fall asleep in all the time. I’ll be perfectly fine.” 

 

“Oh don’t be ridiculous,” Betty scoffs. “I’m not going to make you sleep in the chair. The bed is enormous and we’ve known each other for decades. I think we can be adults and share it.” Her insides are wavering a bit as she says it, but speaks the words with an air of finality. It’ll be fine, she tells herself. They  _ are  _ adults after all, it certainly isn’t going to kill her to sleep in the same bed as her—incredibly attractive—childhood friend. It isn’t the weekend she had in mind, but she somehow feels more at ease over the idea of snooping around this place now that Jughead is around to have her back. 

 

All the time they’d spent cracking cases in high school, whether it was the innocuous, practically inconsequential ones, or the biggest one of all—Jason—Jughead was quite literally her partner in crime, saving both their asses more times than she’s willing to admit. His presence was a constant comfort and support, even as she’d somewhat pulled away from him toward the end of their tenure at Riverdale High. 

 

Any of the residual stress that lingered as she drove out of the city melted away with Jughead’s reappearance in her life. She’s kicking herself for not trying rekindle their friendship sooner; Betty’s been back on the east coast for several years, seen Archie and Veronica countless times, and just never thought to ask about the fourth member of their once-close group. She’s sad to think on how much time they’ve missed out on, yet unable to pinpoint what exactly is so heartbreaking to her about it. 

 

Still, they seem to have picked up right where they’d left off all those years before and Betty is immensely grateful for it. 

 

Jughead continues to stare at her in slight shock over her insistence that they share the bed, but seems to think better of fighting her on it. Instead he glances around the room thats nightly cost is probably more than his month’s rent and tries shake this feeling of unease. 

 

There’s something on gilded letterhead on one of the night stands and he reaches for it. His eyes roll so hard that Betty can see it from across the room. She giggles before she can stop herself. “What’s wrong now?” 

 

“There’s ...activities for Ms. Lodge and guest, which I assume means we have to show up to them now.” 

 

“Oh no, not  _ activities,”  _ she teases lightly. He raises an eyebrow at her in incredulity but there’s a playful smirk spreading across his face. 

 

“I don’t suppose you packed attire for an investors cocktail dinner, after an entire day of spa services, did you?” There’s a tinge of amusement coloring Jughead’s voice but Betty can tell he’s beginning to stress over the situation they’ve landed in. 

 

“I’m friends with Veronica Lodge, Juggie. I don’t go  _ anywhere  _ without an emergency cocktail dress.” That earns her an eye roll, but Betty is relieved to see a little more of the tension drop from his face.  “How about this,” she suggests. “I think I drove past a diner on my way in. We’ll get some fries and shakes like old times and game plan how to not blow our cover.” 

Jughead lets out an audible breath—not quite a sigh, but Betty can tell he’s weighing his options and trying to decide whether he’s actually on board for a weekend of pretending to be married to her. 

 

“Only if you’re buying the shakes,  _ Mrs. Andrews.”  _

 

Betty actually does sigh. “I’m not living this down, am I?” 

 

“Nope.” 

 

.

.

.

 

Betty’s hunch is right—with some space between them and the resort, a table full of shakes, onion rings, and fries, and Jughead’s trademark beanie resting on his head, the apprehension has visibly melted from his body. She can’t exactly say the same for her own anxiety, which is sitting heavily in her chest and making her pick at her nails—in recent years she had merely traded one bad habit for another, but at least nails bitten to the quick were less glaringly evident than fresh cuts on her palms—so she curls both hands around her milkshake glass and tries to even her breathing. 

 

(It doesn’t escape her that Jughead’s gaze keeps flicking to her hands. They had never openly discussed Betty’s self-harm in high school, but had spent enough time together that Jughead was keenly aware of the situation. One day in junior year, she had been digging for pens in the desk drawer of the Blue & Gold and came across a small, generic brand first aid kit that contained bandages and extra ointment. Jughead, always a man of words, hastily scrawled  _ in case you ever run out  _ on a post-it and stuck it to the lid. Tears pricked at Betty’s eyes and she’d hugged him tightly that afternoon before running off to Vixens practice.) 

 

They discuss their options and decide that using the unintended marriage cover was their best bet. Jughead’s suit jacket is still in his car from a previous press event and Betty actually  _ did  _ pack a dress, so the pair agrees that grinning and bearing it through the investor dinner the next evening is likely the best opportunity to do their dirty work without arousing too much suspicion. They’ve settled into a comfortable silence, Betty gripping onto her chocolate shake and Jughead picking at the cold fries while occasionally staring at Betty’s hands. 

 

She’s no longer white-knuckling the glass, but his attentiveness is beginning to grate on her. One of Jughead’s best qualities as her friend has always been seeing her exactly for who she was—the Betty underneath the white noise of extracurriculars and family expectations and beyond the shadow of her friendships with Archie and Veronica. But that also means he’s seen Betty at her most vulnerable and though she knows in her heart that Jughead would never judge her, she can’t help but be slightly on edge knowing he knows all her flaws. 

 

“I’m fine, Jug,” she says in a quiet, even voice after he glances at her hands for the fourth time in thirty seconds. “I don’t ...not anymore. The tensing is more of a reflex now.” 

 

The look of utter affection in his eyes that meets her when she looks up nearly bowls her over. It registers briefly that the tips of his ears are red, but she is too overcome by embarrassment and her own blush to think hard on it. 

 

Jughead’s voice is gentle when he finally speaks. “That wasn’t— I’m sorry, Betts. That’s not what I was worried about. Not in the last half hour anyway,” he looks sheepish. “I could tell when the urge went away. I’m sorry for putting you on the spot.” Something warm unfurls in Betty’s chest and she gives into it to place one of her hands on his in a silent thank you. 

 

He smiles and then coughs in discomfort. “I was more thinking… we, uh. We don’t have rings. That might look fishy.” 

 

“ _ Oh!”  _ Betty is caught off guard but grateful for the topic change. “I didn’t even think of that! I don’t think I even have anything that would pass for either of us, though. I bet there’s a secondhand or thrift store around that has rings for us to check out.” 

 

And as with everything she does in life, Betty overcompensates her anxiety with planning and energy, and they find themselves in a consignment shop in a neighboring, equally-suburban-but-not-quite-as-posh town, picking out wedding rings. Jughead, deeply frazzled, picks the first band that looks like it’ll fit him and then rubs at the back of his neck while Betty scours the trays for something fitting. 

 

After what feels like ages—both to Jughead who shifts his weight from foot to foot and Betty whose enthusiasm is waning—digging through gaudy costume jewelry and rings far too small or too large for her hands, Betty plucks out a delicate band studded with white sapphires that slips easily onto her left ring finger. Something unnamed chokes at the back of her throat and Betty rushes to the front of the store in an effort to stave it off, figuring Jughead will look up from his phone eventually and follow. 

 

When he catches up to her, Betty is rifling through her wallet counting bills. The bored teenage girl at the counter had merely pointed silently at the CASH ONLY sign when Betty smiled, said hello, and tried to hand over her card. 

 

Jughead pauses her with a hand on her shoulder—his left hand, and Betty’s stomach does a complicated tumble when she sees the ring on his finger—before handing the girl his price tag and a fistful of bills. “I’ve got it, Betty. Least I can do.” He looks a little sheepish, but his lips are quirked up in a slight smirk. 

 

“Oh,” is all she can say, so softly she can barely hear it herself. Betty slides the ring back on her own hand and stares at it the whole drive back to the resort. 

 

Jughead parks his car but doesn’t turn the engine off yet. “I can practically  _ hear  _ you thinking. You okay over there?”

 

_ Is she?  _ Betty doesn’t know the answer, nor does she have the right words for the swirling mess of emotions currently running through her head. There’s a ring on her finger and she’s talking to Jughead Jones again and they’re pretending to be married. It’s all a bit much for one day, she decides. 

 

“I just figured I’d get to do the whole falling madly in love thing before buying a wedding ring, that’s all.” Her voice is small, and she doesn’t quite want to look Jughead in the eye, lest she see any hint of amusement or laughter over her desire for the fairytale love story. 

 

Instead, Jughead’s response comes in an equally quiet, somewhat strangled voice. “Yeah, me too.” 

 

.

.

.

 

Betty still feels a nostalgic ache she can’t quite name when she quickly ducks under the fluffy covers of the actually-enormous-but-infinitely-small bed of their shared room later that evening. Given the summer heat, she’d only packed very tiny pajama shorts—printed with little violet hearts and making her feel like she’s twelve years old—and a camisole with a shelf bra that makes her feel secure enough to go without underwire but just nervous enough to cross her arms over her breasts as she slips into bed. 

 

Already in bed, scooted as far to the right as humanly possible, is Jughead, pouring over a thick stack of printed pages. Once Betty is under the blankets with them yanked up to her chin, she’s comfortable enough to strike up conversation again. 

 

“Working on the sequel?” 

 

He looks startled and Betty giggles lightly. “You actually thought I wouldn't read the  _ New York Times best-selling novel by J. Jones _ ? I loved that you kept it open ended to explore a new facet of the story.”

 

When Jughead coughs hard to clear his throat, Betty laughs a little more. “I just ...I dunno,” he starts. “We haven’t talked in ages, so I wasn’t sure you would take the time to read a brick of a novel about what you already literally went through.” 

 

“Jug,” Betty chastises. “Even Archie read your novel. I talk to him almost every day, it would've been hard to avoid reading it. If I hadn’t still been on the west coast when it came out, I would have come to every launch event to support you. But I'll be there for the sequel launch.” She feels oddly vulnerable in this moment, but barrels on anyway. “It’s been years, I know, but I’ll always have your back. You always had mine in high school.” 

 

There’s an intensity in Jughead’s gaze as he turns to look at Betty, covers yanked nearly up to her chin, but smooth shoulders exposed and expression earnest as she speaks. He opens his mouth to say something but seems to think better of it and snaps his jaw shut. They’re both silent for a few moments. Finally, Jughead sets the pages on the side table and clicks off his overhead lamp. “Thanks, Betts,” he says softly.

 

“Anytime,” she whispers back. Shutting off her own light, Betty tries to nestle herself into a comfortable sleeping position without crossing the carefully-drawn invisible line down the center of the bed. Jughead’s main worry seems to have been not making  _ her  _ feel awkward, but Betty is petrified of doing anything that may make Jughead retreat or close back up. 

 

In her restlessness, Betty’s foot brushes against what she thinks may have been Jughead’s thigh. She flushes in nervousness but then burns in shame when Jughead flinches away from her immediately. Betty know she isn’t the most desirable of options, but had selfishly hoped she was rebuilding her rapport with Jughead. Him scrambling in the opposite direction from her in bed, after profusely trying to refuse sharing the space, didn’t bode well for her. 

 

Unwelcome tears burn at the back of Betty’s eyes and she bites her lip to muffle any sounds that may escape her. 

 

“Jesus, Betts!” Jughead exclaims in the same moment. “In all these years, you still haven’t been able to regulate your body temperature? Your feet are fucking freezing and it’s the dead of summer.”

 

A wave of relief washes over her. “Sorry, Juggie,” she giggles. Finally able to shake some of the tension from her shoulders, Betty slowly lets sleep overtake her, a light smile on her face. 

 

.

.

.

 

Despite the weekend and the luxurious setting, Betty still wakes up like clockwork at 7am. Jughead is sprawled across a large portion of the even-larger bed, messy curls falling across his forehead. His light snoring sounds more like a whistle and Betty finds it endlessly endearing; she’s blaming her sudden urge to sweep his hair across his forehead and out of his closed eyes on the early hour and the manufactured affection that comes from sharing a bed with someone. 

 

(It’s definitely  _ not  _ because she is fascinated by the slope of his cheeks or fantasizing about how soft those dark locks of hair would feel under her fingers. And Betty certainly isn’t mesmerized by the fake ring on her finger and how that  _ particular _ manufactured affection makes her want to lace her fingers through his own ringed fingers and stare at metal against metal against soft skin. Not at all.) 

 

Instead, Betty stares at the ceiling for a while before she settles on taking an incredible, long, hot shower in the luxurious spa-like bathroom. She takes her time, knowing that she likely won’t have this kind of opportunity to be as lazy and meandering as she pleases for quite some time. 

 

When the steam fogs the spacious bathroom and Betty can see her fingers start pruning, she exits the shower to wrap herself in one of the heavenly towels she’d eyed the day before. She’s just finished blow-drying her hair when her cell phone lights up with a call. It’s Veronica, no doubt finally calling to inquire about the  _ Mrs. Andrews _ cover. _.  _ Betty winces again, chastising herself for the idiotic slip of the tongue because while Veronica will laugh it off, she has the distinct feeling that it really annoyed Jughead. 

 

“Hey, V!” 

 

In classic Veronica fashion, she barrels into the conversation without so much as a good morning. “So as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Archie  _ also  _ planned to have someone cover for me this weekend. I’m genuinely shocked Jughead didn’t put up a fight, which means Archie is definitely proposing tonight or there’s no way that misanthrope would have agreed to this. Although,” she starts slyly. “I’m sure he’s warmed up to the idea now that he gets to spend his Saturday with you in a robe.” 

 

“What?” Betty certainly noticed Jughead looking at her with slightly-longer-than-appropriate appreciative looks, but she merely chalked that up to the fact he hasn’t seen her since she was a teenager. 

 

Veronica scoffs. “Oh, please. Betty Cooper, that boy has been head over heels for you for  _ years.  _ And you’re a total smokeshow now, even more so than when we were in high school. I bet he’s over the moon to finally see you again. I’ve been meaning to get the four of us together again, but he still looks like he’s vaguely in pain whenever he spends time with me so I didn’t press it.”

 

For a moment, Betty is almost too stunned to move. She and Jughead had always been very close friends but  _ head over heels  _ seems ...well maybe it doesn’t seem like that much of an exaggeration anymore. She thinks about the way it felt to have his hand on her shoulder and the way Jughead looked at her when they bought the rings, and swallows hard. 

 

“Veronica, we’re good, it’s fine, it’s not like that,” Betty knows she sounds overly defensive.  “And we shared the bed last night with like four feet of space between us. There’s no way he feels like that.” ...right? And there's no way something that may or may not resemble feelings is bubbling up in her chest now that they're spending time together again.  

 

“Whatever you say! You may not think he has feelings for you, but you also denied having any feelings for him in high school so I don't trust your emotional perception skills,” Veronica chirps. “Archie and I are off to brunch, but keep me posted and I’ll obviously call you after I get the ring. Love you lots, bye!”

 

Thoroughly distracted now, Betty clutches at her towel before exiting the bathroom in a cloud of steam. Tip-toeing to her suitcase on the dresser in search of fresh clothes, she doesn’t realize Jughead is awake and out of bed until she turns abruptly and sees him bent over reaching for boxers out of his bag on the floor. 

 

He isn’t wearing anything and Betty is greeted by the muscular curve of Jughead’s bare ass. 

 

“Oh, Jesus,” she yelps, feeling the blush rise all the way from her toes to her scalp. “I’m so sorry!” 

 

***

 

Jughead thinks, vaguely, that he might regret bringing up the  _ lack of rings _ thing. He’s not even sure why their lack of wedding jewellery bothered him so much to begin with, but when he was staring distractedly at Betty’s bare hand something pricked uncomfortably at the back of his mind. 

 

(Except, he thinks he does know, and it has a little to do with the way FP had resolutely kept his wedding ring on the appropriate finger of his left hand long after his mom had skipped town. He’d only relented to taking it off the morning he was due to begin his sentence, dropping it in the bowl by the front door meant for keys and loose change with a heavy sigh, and that was the end. His father had finally admitted defeat; his marriage, the life he wanted more than anything to repair, was over. Jughead has perhaps assigned a little too much significance to the metal since then.)

 

(It may also have had a lot to do with the fact that he was still reeling over this whole  _ fake married  _ thing, getting completely hung up on the wrong details to distract himself from things he resolutely didn’t want to think about.)

 

He wakes up in the middle of the night to Betty’s incessant shuffling—it appears she’s still something of a fitful sleeper, another memory from childhood he's surprised to see pulled to the front of his mind so quickly—to find her left arm slung firmly across his chest, effectively holding him in place. It isn’t just the sleepy warmth of her smooth skin burning through the thin material of his shirt that has his breath catching in the back of his throat. Jughead zeroes in on the new decoration adorning Betty’s finger, glinting brightly in the sliver of light filtering in through the crack in the curtains. His own hand drifts towards hers, the tips of his fingers ghosting over her knuckles. She lets out a contented hum in her sleep, burrowing closer to his side of the sheets. Jughead snaps his hand back instantly, rolling Betty gently away from him.

 

The whole view—rings included—is a little too much, too domestic, and he has to yank himself out of the that daydream before it has the chance to properly begin. From the second he saw her again, they’d quickly fallen into something familiar and comforting, a shadow of an old home that was quickly solidifying with each passing moment. Jughead had braced himself for impact at the mention of their old campouts in Archie’s backyard but it hadn’t come; instead, something thick and hot like warm honey had begun to slide its way down his insides, melting away the lingering tension behind their reunion. It was still a balancing scale though, resting carefully on a pin point, and the sight of Betty’s hair falling onto his pillow and her ringed finger so close to his is a little too precarious. 

 

When he wakes, for the day this time, her side of the bed is empty but still warm, the soft rush of the shower spray coming from behind the closed bathroom door. Jughead sighs, pushing his hair back from his forehead with stiff fingers and reaches for his phone—there’s a missed call from Archie. He hits the button to dial him back, not surprised that his friend answers on the first ring. 

 

“Jug, I had no idea Veronica had sent Betty, too,” Archie blurts in lieu of a proper greeting. 

 

“Communication is the key to all good relationships, Arch,” Jughead drawls, his voice coming out still rough with sleep. He stills at Archie’s snort. “What?” 

 

“Great advice, but can you really dish it out if you don’t exactly follow it?”

 

“What are you talking about?” 

 

He can practically hear Archie’s eye roll. “I’m talking about you never  _ communicating  _ to Betty how you feel about her, so you can stop pining finally and actually, y’know, date her.”

 

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jughead gets out through gritted teeth, voice low as he glances towards the bathroom door, as if Betty might somehow be able to hear both sides of their conversation from here. 

 

“ _ Sure _ , you don’t,” Archie replies smugly, instead of arguing. That somehow riles Jughead more, wanting a chance to defend himself of the truth being relayed to him from a surprisingly perceptive Archie. “But at least I can admit how many songs I’ve written about Veronica’s smile—I don’t even wanna think about how much you’ve written about Betty by now.” 

 

Jughead thinks of the way she’d giggled (how it sounded like the way whipped cream on top of milkshakes tastes) when he’d cursed at her cold feet and he’s unable to fight a smile he isn’t aware is twitching at the corner of his lips. 

 

“Shut up,” is all he replies, the smile still present enough to turn his sullen tone into something less impactful.

 

“Listen, maybe you should— Hold up, Ronnie’s waving her hands at me. What, babe?” he says away from the receiver, a muffled response sounding in the background. Jughead gets up with a sigh, taking the pause as an opportunity to shed his shirt and go in search of some new clothes to change into. 

 

He’s routing around in his duffel when a, “Dude! Veronica says you guys shared a bed last night, did something happen?” sounds in his ear. Archie seems alarmingly too excited by the idea, given that a) Jughead has never been one to overshare the intimate details of any relationship he’s had, even with Archie, and b) he already knows that nothing happened by way of Jughead’s silent but totally detectable wound up mood. 

 

Dimly, he registers that Betty must’ve spoken to Veronica at some point this morning, told her of their  _ arrangement  _ probably, but he dismisses that quickly as having no importance. Probably.  

 

“There’s only one bed, and you know Betty; she wouldn’t let me take the chair to save her life,” Jughead says around a swallow, digging out a clean pair of boxers. 

 

“This is perfect!” a voice that definitely isn’t Archie’s pitches in. He’s about to chastise Archie for putting him on speaker when Veronica continues. “And so romantic, you’ll be confessing your love for each other in no time.” He envisions her hands as clasped together in girlish glee. 

 

“While that’s a romantic notion, Millionaire Matchmaker, it’s wildly unrealistic.” Before either of them can protest further he decides to end their plotting. “Look, thanks for the free stay and the unexpected roommate, but I have to go. Talk to you later,” he signs off, despite having no plans to actually follow up on that (at least not this weekend), and disconnects the call. 

 

He’s just slipping into the clean underwear when a voice startles him straight, not having heard the click of the bathroom door through repetitions of  _ your love for each other  _ persistently playing in his head. 

 

“Oh, Jesus, I’m so sorry!” Betty yelps. He quickly pulls his boxers the rest of the way up before whipping around, deciding that she’s probably already got enough of an eyeful. 

 

Whatever he was about to say dies on his lips, his own half-nakedness forgotten when he sees the sight of Betty wrapped only in her bath towel. Her legs seem to go on forever, lean and tan. Her hair looks soft and smooth from the blow dryer, her collarbones and chest covered in a gentle, pink flush from the hot water. It runs into the dark shade of red her face has turned at walking in on him undressed, beautiful green eyes wide with panic. 

 

“I should have… um…” she stumbles, voice trailing off into nothing as she struggles to come up with the thing she should have done. What  _ he  _ should have done was probably wait until he could use the bathroom to change, rather than subjecting her to the sight of his bare ass this early in her morning. He’s about to say as much, taking full blame for the awkward moment when something Betty does stops him short. 

 

The longer the pause between them lingers on the more he begins to realise that she still hasn’t turned away. In fact, her eyes keep flicking back to him—to his  _ body _ —as if she can’t help herself. He can quite clearly see them trailing over his chest and allows himself a moment to think that maybe,  _ just maybe _ , she’s flushing for another reason altogether. Then she tugs the corner of her lower lip between her teeth and he’s done for. He needs to shut this down before it turns into a situation that only boxers cannot hide.

 

Jughead clears his throat before speaking. Her eyes snap to his face quickly, mouth parting in something like surprise. “It’s okay, Betty. My fault. I should have waited to change.” He briefly registers that there might be something smug colouring his tone (because hey, he’s aware he’s filled out a little since high school. Not quite to Archie’s standards but who is?), but he can’t find it in himself to worry. Even as clueless as he’s ever been he’s about eighty percent sure Betty Cooper was just checking him out, not even that discreetly, and it’s got him riding some sort of weird high. 

 

“Right, well I’ll just…” Betty doesn’t finish her sentence once more, pointing in the direction of her bag. He steps out of her way, allowing her to breeze past, sending up a pleasant waft of whatever expensive bath products she’d just used, and watches her hastily pull out some clothes before hurrying back to the bathroom. She doesn’t once meet his eye again. 

 

.

.

.

 

If Jughead appreciated how undone Betty had looked in just her towel earlier, and how much he thinks she enjoyed seeing him just as undressed, he’s certainly paying for any sinful thoughts now. 

 

Breakfast hadn’t been too awkward, at least not after a few rounds of ‘who snores the loudest’ had been played.

 

( _ “You literally shook the bed, Jug.” _

 

_ “I thought Betty Cooper would be more reserved with her use of the word literally.” _

 

_ “Well, it’s the truth!” _

 

_ “Uh-huh, like I didn’t get whacked in the face with your flailing limbs for half the night. You lose all extremity control in your sleep, you know.” _

 

_ “Me and my flailing limbs resent that.”) _

 

The other events of the morning seem to be easily forgiven and forgotten after that. But then the ‘activities’ that they’d been notified of had begun and whatever higher power there may be was now tormenting him for his earlier smugness. The couples massage hadn’t been too bad, if he didn’t let himself think about the fact that Betty was completely naked underneath the towel, two feet away from himself. He’d already been through this situation once today, he’d got this. At one point an involuntary moan slips from between Betty’s lips as her masseuse hits a particularly tight knot in her back and Jughead has to stop himself from making any suspicious movements. The rest of the massage isn’t so much relaxing as it is spent with thoughts of the dingey trailer bathroom he remembers from his earlier youth, or all the times Archie has tried to explain the complexities of his teeny-bopper lyrics, and anything else than can keep his mind strictly out of the gutter. 

 

The hot tub is the current problem. The towel has been replaced with a light blue bikini, highlighting all the curves Betty has developed since the last time he saw her in a bathing suit, some ten years ago probably. And Jughead’s doing is very best not to stare—he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable or impose his unwelcome attention on her—but as she tips her head back against the edge of the tub, eyes closed in contentment, his fingers itch to follow the little droplets making their way down the column of her neck. 

 

Although, he certainly doesn’t resent her for suggesting this option over the ‘mud bath’ that he considers to be a complete oxymoron. Betty started to explain that it was a skin treatment rather than an actual bath but had stopped, pressing her lips together in amusement at what Jughead can only assume was the blank expression on his face. 

 

“This is nice,” she hums now, eyes still shut, shoulders dipping further below the surface of the water as her muscles relax with the rhythmic pulsing of the jets. “I almost don’t want this place to be harbouring any untoward secrets. It'd be good to have the option to come back. I haven’t had a vacation this nice since… well, I haven’t had a vacation this nice,” Betty finishes with a throaty kind of laugh, one that had Jughead’s stomach flipping almost nauseously.

 

“Yeah,” he croaks, turning to look over the lush, green landscape beyond the decking they’re seated on. “I guess it would be nice if the only criminal thing about this place is the price.” She cracks one eye open to send him a flat look. 

 

“Oh, I’m sure you’re doing alright for yourself, Mr. Big-Shot-Writer-Man.”

 

Jughead scoffs. “How well do you think being a writer pays, Betts?” 

 

“ _ Bestselling _ writer,” she reminds him pointedly, sending a sprinkling of water towards him as she flips a finger in his direction. 

 

“Yeah, maybe so,” he shrugs, taking in the way her eyes are heavy-lidded in relaxation. “Let’s just hope I’m not a one-hit wonder.” He startles as Betty’s hand finds his beneath the bubbles, somehow feeling searing against his skin. 

 

“I know you won’t be, Juggie. Your writing is just so real, so honest. I think that’s why people love it so much. I know that’s why I love it.” She gives him the softest smile. “It’s so easy to see how much you care about what you’re writing. And if  _ you  _ continue to love it, your books will only get better from here. I’m really proud of you.” 

 

Jughead stares at her, the earnestness on her face, and wonders if the tingling sensation growing in his lips as he looks at hers is real or imagined. It’s been ages since Betty has stopped one of his spirals of self-depreciation in its tracks, and he didn’t realise just how much he’d missed that feeling of having someone you love support you unconditionally. 

 

Because that’s what this is, he realises with a pang. He loves Archie, and despite the fact he’s never outwardly admitted it he loves Veronica. And he loves JB, and his dad, and Fred. But Jughead has been  _ in _ love with Betty for the better part of his formative years, and seeing her now just cements the feelings he’d hastily buried that day on graduation, reminding him that they never really went anywhere. Betty was always so good at not only supporting him herself, but reminding him that it was okay to let himself be his own support—not everything had to come from a place of necessity, of doing it because it had to be done. He wanted nothing more than to follow his passion to write, and Betty had always reminded him that doing so because he loved it was enough of a reason. They may have changed as they grew up, apart from each other, but at her very core Betty was still the same.

 

“Thank you,” he tells her in a small voice, finding her fingers and giving them a grateful squeeze. 

 

Her body has drifted closer with the movement of the water, the length of her side dangerously close to pressing against his. She isn’t smiling now, not even softly, but instead staring at him with an almost frightening intensity. Her brow has the tiniest crease in the middle, like she’s puzzling over something difficult, and Jughead nearly reaches up to smooth the wrinkle away with his thumb. Her gaze finishes roaming over his face and settles on his lips. Jughead’s breath catches in his throat, heart hammering so hard in his chest he’s sure she must be able to hear it. He can’t be reading the signs wrong, can he? She’s thinking about kissing him. He leans in, imperceptibly, to see if she does the same.

 

A string of sharp  _ ‘plinks’ _ sounds from somewhere over by the door—the pocket of her robe, Jughead realizes belatedly. Betty seems to deflate, floating away from him with a groan as she settles back into her seat. 

 

“You don’t need to check that?” Jughead asks after a beat, pulse still up, his voice coming out foreign even to his own ears as the window of opportunity clicks shut. 

 

“No, it’s just work,” Betty grumbles with certainty. 

 

“Don’t they know you’re on vacation? And that it's the  _ weekend _ ?”

 

“Yes, they most definitely know,” she sighs. “Hasn’t stopped them from trying to reach me, though.” Her mouth is tilted down at the corners as she swirls her fingers across the surface of the water in aimless patterns. His hand drifts to her shoulder, rubbing away the tension there gently.

 

“You okay?” 

 

“Yeah, it’s just…” Betty reaches up to lay her hand on top of his absently. “I don’t know, this isn’t what I thought I’d be doing now. And, Jughead, I’m so happy for you, I really am. The fact that you went after what you wanted until you got it—I admire that so much.” Her expression falters. “But, it also reminds me that I haven’t really tried enough. To get what I want.” 

 

Jughead’s heart hurts for her, and she suddenly looks so small beneath his hand. Shoving his reservations to the side he wraps his arm around her shoulder, hauling her firmly against his side. “Well, what  _ do _ you want, Betty?”

 

She thinks it over for such a pause that he thinks she might not answer. Thinking he’s crossed some kind of invisible line, Jughead begins to loosen his grip. Betty turns unexpectedly, resting her head beneath his chin, each puff of her breath fanning across the skin of his neck till he has to suppress a shiver. “I want to do things for me, for a change. I want to think about what I want  _ before _ I think about whether other people will be okay with it.”

 

Jughead quirks his lips just slightly, exhaling a laugh through his nose. He gives the end of Betty’s ponytail a tug, and she lifts her head to look at him curiously. “Then do it.” 

 

“You say that like it’s easy,” she whines, eyes shining. 

 

“Betty Cooper, there wasn’t a thing you put your mind to in high school that I didn’t see you work for until you got. Easy doesn’t even come into it; for you, I just know it’s possible.” 

 

Jughead’s chest constricts as he watches her blink rapidly, the tip of her nose turning a dusky pink as she sniffs lightly. He doesn’t expect the pressure of her mouth, just clipping the corner of his mouth; he hopes he can pass off the red shade of his skin as being because of the temperature of the hot tub. 

 

Before he can say anything else, Betty continues, “Don’t you mean Betty Andrews?” There’s a devilish cheek to her tone that has him feeling bold enough to pinch the soft skin of her side in retaliation, delighting in the high squeal she lets out. 

 

.

.

.

 

“What are you gonna do while I’m in there?” Betty says, tilting her head towards the salon where  _ Mrs. Andrews _ is due to get her hair and nails done before the investor dinner tonight. Betty’s voice is light and airy, and she seems the most serene Jughead’s seen her since they arrived. 

 

“I’m pretty sure that TV in our room has my name on it. Also, anything I eat from the minibar gets charged to the Lodges and it would be an embarrassment to the Jones name if I didn’t take advantage of that,” Jughead grins, crossing one ankle over the other as he leans against a marble pillar. 

 

Betty rolls her eyes affectionately, folding her arms over her chest. “You know, I think they have a pretty impressive gym around here somewhere…” she teases, lifting a brow. 

 

Jughead’s snorts. “Andrews by name does not mean Andrews by nature,” he replies dryly. “See you in a few hours?” She nods, pushing open the door and disappearing inside. 

 

He’s pretty sure he’s still riding on some sort of proverbial cloud from the unmistakable intimacy that they just shared in. He can still feel the delicious weight of Betty in his arms, the feel of her head on his chest. 

 

Really, he tries to reason with himself, what has he got to lose if he tells her? Sure, she’s moved back to the city, but it’s not like he’s run into her yet, until they were physically put on the same path by their mutual friends. If he reveals how he feels, there can’t be a downside. If she feels the same then it would be the best decision he’s ever made. And if she doesn’t, then he doesn’t have to see her again—at least not for some time, Archie and Veronica’s wedding might be awkward—and he can just go home with his tail between his legs and finally get over the wonder that is Betty Cooper. He twists his ring absently around his finger. 

 

He’s so wrapped up in making plans for the ‘big reveal’ (not until the day they leave here, that’s for sure) as he’s walking down the corridor that he almost doesn’t register the mumble of hushed voices coming from the linen closet, of all places. That detail alone is enough to instantly perk up his ears, snooping senses kicking in like he’s back in high school all over again. Back pressed to the wall, Jughead leans in to listen.

 

“...may have lucked out with the Lodges sending those people in their place, but we can’t be sure they’re not here to snoop around and report back. I want you to keep an eye on them, okay? A  _ close _ eye on them. I won’t have anything ruining the set up we’ve got here, least of all Hiram Lodge and his minions. Got it?”

 

Jughead ducks around a corner quickly, peering back around to see the manager who’d first found them in her office hurriedly exiting the closet. Jughead pulls out his phone, dialling the most recent number to be added into his contacts. 

 

“Hello?”

 

“Betts, listen. I think I’ve got something, about the hotel—” Jughead whispers hurriedly. 

 

“Hi, honey!” Betty squeals in a voice he hasn’t heard her use before. He’s about to ask her what the hell is going on when she says, slightly distant, “It’s my husband. He’s so sweet, it’s only been a few minutes but he already misses me.” Jughead rolls his eyes at the charade but carries on regardless. 

 

“Listen, I just overheard the manager talking to someone about the Lodges—about us,” he says, slipping their keycard into the door after glancing over his shoulder. 

 

“I miss you too, baby,” Betty purrs in his ear, and Jughead nearly has to physically shake his head to get the slew of images that pass before his eyes to clear. He needs to focus. 

 

“She said something about not wanting us to ‘ruin the set up’ they’ve got going on. There really is something weird going on here.” There’s a buzz beginning beneath his skin that he hasn’t felt for a long while. “We have some work to do.”

 

“Stop, you’re so bad! I’ll be back in just over an hour, okay? We’ll continue this then. Love you,” Betty replies, and then the line goes dead. 

 

Jughead stares at the handset for a second, his mouth dry. He knows she was keeping up an act, but that didn’t make it any less affecting. Now he knows for certain that there’s something for them to find, hidden within the walls of the resort, but he also knows that he can’t possibly leave without telling Betty how he feels. 

 

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed!   
> if you did, please let us a comment, we greatly appreciate it!


	4. Chapter 4

Jughead is lost in thought when Betty finally returns from the rest of her spa appointments and her sudden presence is like sunshine breaking through clouds on a rainy day. She doesn’t start with a hello, merely pushing through the suite door and rambling as though she was carrying on a conversation from the hallway. 

 

“Well, that was just absolutely useless from an investigative standpoint. I can’t complain about a blowout and someone fixing my ripped cuticles but the manicurist was such a gossip, so I tried to get her going in case I could learn anything useful. Instead, I get an earful about all the affairs she knows about,” Betty flops stomach first onto the bed as she says this, careful not to muss her hair. “And  _ then  _ this woman next to me starts going on about how the resort lifeguards are ‘ripe for the picking’ if I felt the need to stretch my legs in my marriage, given how ‘depressingly small’ the stones on my ring are.” 

 

Betty rolls over to face Jughead in the armchair, who’s looking over the top of his manuscript and raising an eyebrow at her. She bites her lip, blushing slightly, and Jughead fights the urge to leap over to the bed and cover her body with his. The memory of her skin pressed against his in the hot tub is still very much fresh in his mind. 

 

“That’s when you called, by the way, so I really wanted to lay it on thick just to show her because how dare she make assumptions about our marriage based on the size of my ring I mean come  _ on,  _ that’s just rude.” She pauses again, and says to the floor, “I like my ring. It’s not showy. Hers looked like a goddamn ring pop it was so big.” 

 

Jughead wants to crack a joke, but his throat is stuck on  _ our marriage _ and he’s distracted by the soft waves framing her face.  

 

“Juggie?” He realizes she’s staring at him with the beginnings of concern on her face because he hasn’t uttered a single word since she entered the room. He makes a conscious effort to pick up his slackened jaw and clears his throat for good measure.

 

“Sounds like quite the eventful afternoon. I didn’t realize beauty appointments could be quite so intense,” he jokes, tapping a nail against his own ring. He’s using all his restraint to not blurt out his feelings right now. There’s a time and a place for that, he reminds himself, and however much he wants to it’s not quite yet.

 

Betty looks at him fondly, a mock kind of pity gracing her features. “Oh, you have no idea,” she smiles, and Jughead returns it easily. “Inappropriate nail technicians aside, you’ve got intel for me,” she says, wiggling into a cross-legged position, not bothering to hide her excitement.

 

Jughead takes a moment to appreciate the gleaming intrigue in her eyes, no different from the way they used to look when they uncovered a new lead for a story, before shaking himself out of the moment and twisting to face her more fully. “The good news is that it looks like we’ll actually get something out of this ridiculous weekend afterall,” he comments dryly. “The bad news is that Veronica’s hunch was right and this place might not be entirely above board.” 

 

Betty looks lost in thought, suddenly quiet, a slight pucker between her brows. 

 

“You okay?” Jughead asks, a hand reaching out to sweep gently across her bare knee. Her gaze flicks down to it so quickly that he withdraws it self-consciously. 

 

“Yeah. Yeah, fine. Um, so, what did you hear?” she asks with a shake of her head, smoothing out her expression once more. 

 

“The manager we ran into when we first arrived was talking to someone else—I didn’t see who— in the linen closet of all places. Can you say suspicious activity?” Betty snorts lightly in agreement. “Anyway, she was saying something about the good set up they’ve got going on here, and that they didn’t want Hiram Lodge to find out and ruin it.”

 

Betty taps a freshly painted nail against the top of her bent knee, chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully. “ _ Okay _ ,” she begins slowly. “So, at least we can tell Veronica that, whatever it is, her dad isn’t involved. It might be bad, but it’s not quite Hiram Lodge bad,” she muses. 

 

“True,” Jughead agrees, bringing his laced hands to rest against his lips. “Now we just need to find out the  _ what _ , and the extent.” Betty hums softly. “Any cunning plans?” he tries hopefully. 

 

Betty sighs, already shaking her head. “Not as of right now.” Her eyes flit over to the clock on the nightstand. “And we should start getting ready—the investor dinner starts soon. Maybe we’ll figure something out while we’re there.” 

 

Jughead suppresses a shudder as he thinks of the schmoozing about to take place in his near future. Betty must catch the hints of a grimace that manage to slip through, however, because she rolls her eyes at him before clambering off the bed and padding towards her suitcase. 

 

“Jug,” she chastises gently, “anyone would think you didn’t  _ want _ to play the corporate stooge for an evening of banal small talk and bite-sized portions.”

 

“Not high on my list,” he grumbles as she makes her way to the bathroom. He groans, joints cracking in a way not entirely befitting of his age as he hauls himself out of the chair. “But, it is a sacrifice that has to be made to keep my wife in the luxury she’s become accustomed to.” He throws in an out of character wink—for the purpose of the charade, he tells himself. 

 

He thinks he can make out the color in her cheeks rising, filing that away as a mark in his favor, before she ducks behind the door. 

.

.

.

The trip down to his car to retrieve the suit jacket that’s thoroughly creased in the trunk gives Jughead a few minutes to regroup. 

 

He’s sure he’s still going to tell Betty how he feels, he is. It would drive him insane not to. But he still finds her frustratingly difficult to get a read on. He always used to be able to tell, at the very least,  _ what _ she was feeling, if not why. It’d been more than a few years since he was so intune to Betty’s feelings, it appears, because one second he thinks he sees it, that little flicker of attraction when she looks at him, or the way her chest hitches when she pulls in a bigger breath than normal at his touch. 

 

But, what if he’s completely imagining it? There’s always the possibility that he’s seeing what he wants to see, grabbing onto any detail and making it what he wants it to be. It would just be too coincidental (too good) if Betty’s feelings aligned with his own after all this time. The idea pokes at his brain, trying to call itself fate, and it seems a little kitschy for his liking. 

 

Betty’s words are what begin to echo in his head as he walks, head down, back through the hotel doors. She’d told him she wanted to do things for her. (Funnily enough, Archie had given him that same advice before the trip. If Archie wasn’t such a terrible liar he’d think this whole thing was a setup.) The thought that Betty would be disappointed in him for not  _ chasing his dreams _ , so to speak, actually makes him chuckle. He’s got to at least try—surprisingly, it’s worked for him thus far. 

 

The shady manager is at the front desk again as Jughead passes, and he slows his pace just on the off chance she says something interesting. 

 

“Oh, of course, Sir. I’ll be attending the dinner personally,” she says sweetly to the suited and booted man resting an elbow on the desk before her. “All of our most important and valued clients will be in attendance, it’s the only place for me to be!” Her smile is a false as her enthusiasm. Jughead’s footsteps falter but he’s careful to keep his stride as even as possible for the rest of the walk to the elevators.

 

“Betty!” he calls, fumbling the keycard in his hand. “I heard the manager talking and she—” He almost loses his footing for the second time in the space of a couple of minutes as she comes barrelling out of the bathroom, arms contorted at a strange angle behind her back, teeth slightly gritted. “You okay?” Jughead asks with some amusement. 

 

“Yeah,” she breathes, adorably out of breath for someone not doing much physical activity. “What did you say?”

 

“Err, right. The manager again. She said something about attending to the dinner herself tonight. Which means, if at least one of us can get away, her office will be empty for a significant amount of time. For untoward purposes.” At the slight bulging of her eyes he adds. “Digging. For evidence. Of… stuff.” He can practically hear his framed degree crying at his lack of eloquence. 

 

“Good sleuthing, Pink Panther,” she smirks, still struggling at her back.

 

“Nice. And there’s something about the way she said it, that everyone  _ valuable  _ would be there tonight… I don’t know, it seemed off. She did that thing you do,” Jughead shrugs. Betty’s hands finally drop, heavily, at her sides. 

 

“What ‘thing’?” she demands, somewhat defensively. It’s cute. 

 

“You know, that thing. When you’re overcompensating for your lie; you tilt your head kind of like this, and lift your eyebrows, and your eyes go all wide and…” He gestures vaguely in front of his face. Betty’s bottom lip is pushing out, but she’s not saying anything in her defence, so he knows she knows he’s right. It takes a lot not to reach up and run the pad of his thumb across the protruding lip, or do something even more foolish like kiss it.  _ Later _ , he reminds himself. 

 

“Ugh,” she groans instead, reaching back around herself. “The zipper is stuck, can you help?” Betty begs, spinning around before he has a chance to answer. The dress she’s got on, he’s just noticing, is a simple, white lace that crosses over in a V in the front unlike anything he’s ever seen her in before (he’s been studiously ignoring the way the smooth swell of her breasts are balanced precariously against the edge of the fabric, and the fact that he can tell she’s had to forgo a bra), the zipper coming up from her waist to the midpoint of her back. 

 

“Sure,” he croaks out after Betty’s swept her hair over her shoulder and he’s greeted with a clear expanse of smooth skin—somehow this feels more intimate than being in their bathing suits. His voice trembles in time with his fingers as they reach up, grasping the little metal tab and wiggling it firmly to release the trapped fabric. The tips of his fingers brush against Betty’s back, a strange kind of static travelling through his hands and up his arms—he wonders if she feels it, too. All too soon the zipper is done and she’s spinning back around, her eyes darting everywhere but his face. 

 

“Thanks,” she whispers, just as her gaze settles on his lips. She begins rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms, drawing attention to the goosebumps that have erupted across her skin. 

 

“Betty…” Jughead murmurs, all promises to himself forgotten as their heads drift closer. 

 

The alarm on Betty’s phone goes off, shrill and unwelcome. She springs back, all but running over to the nightstand to shut it off. “We need to get going,” she informs him, smoothing a hand over her hair. Jughead nods, not trusting himself to speak, and holds the door open to let her out first. 

.

.

.

The dinner, as expected, is a drag. He’s never been particularly adept at small talk, but at least all the events he’s had to attend in the past year or so have gone towards improving that particular social skill. 

 

Jughead does get a kick out of introducing himself as  _ Forsythe Pendleton Andrews III _ , and trying not to laugh at the stunned look on Betty’s face. And, she his wife, Elizabeth Andrews. 

 

“What’s with the full names, Forsythe?” she asks through a tight-lipped smile, linking the hand that isn’t holding a champagne flute through his crooked elbow. 

 

“I’m just trying to match up to the level of pretentious currently in the room, darling,” he grins back, tilting her chin up with a single finger. If he’s being completely honest with himself, the thing he’s enjoying about the dinner is having Betty completely glued to his side, occasionally leaning into him or dropping kisses on his jaw as they schmooze. Their role play of husband and wife has turned out to be surprisingly advantageous tonight. Whereas before the arrangement has broken him out in a cold sweat every time he thought about it, now he’s actually having fun with it. 

 

He and Betty have been having an unspoken contest, after he’d decided to endow them with their full titles, of who could come up with the most ridiculous details about their Upper West Side, holidaying in the Hamptons, silver spoon life as a couple. Jughead works on Wall Street (it was surprising how few details they actually had to give about  _ what  _ exactly he did there to earn his millions, but apparently the rich are blindly accepting of the other rich), and Betty is a stay-at-home wife who designs couture dog handbags in her free time. A few bubbles of champagne had almost come out of his nose when she’d announced that one. 

 

“It’s so nice having a break from the children. God knows we need it,” the woman whose name Jughead cannot remember is saying to them. He’s been focused on the lipstick stain on her overly whitened teeth for most of the conversation. “Children can be delightful but they certainly are a handful,” she finishes smugly. Jughead wonders if he can figure on how many nannies they’ve employed just by the amount of diamonds she’s wearing. 

 

Betty slips her hand up to his shoulder, mirroring the woman’s tight smile with a terrifying accuracy—Cooper genes, he thinks wryly. “Oh, we know don’t we, honey?” she giggles. “The twins are such  _ big  _ characters.” Jughead pulls his lower lip between his teeth to bite back a laugh as he feels Betty’s shoulders tighten to conceal her laughter. 

 

“Twins, how adorable! What are their names?” the woman asks, the enthusiasm in her voice nowhere near her eyes—she looks disconcertingly robotic. 

 

“Um,” Betty hesitates, so he jumps in. 

 

“Ambrosia and… Archibald,” he finishes slyly, steadfastly ignoring the feeling of Betty’s narrowed eyes on his profile. 

 

“How darling!” the woman replies, unfazed. The conversation is, blessedly, soon over, and just as he’s about to take a step Betty whirls in front of him, stopping him with a hand on his chest. Her fingers slip just inside the fabric of his unbuttoned shirt, tapping idly against his chest. Jughead hopes she can’t feel the increase in his pulse.

 

“Ambrosia and _Archibald_?” she asks pointedly. 

 

“I couldn’t resist,” he shrugs sheepishly, catching her around the waist with his free hand. She doesn’t pull out of the embrace, if anything resting her weight more fully against the length of his front. 

 

She regards him suspiciously for a moment before letting out a disappointed sigh. “I can’t believe you named our daughter after a  _ salad _ , Juggie. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.” Her eyes are shining with mischief. 

 

Jughead takes a moment to choke over the words  _ our daughter _ , which coming after the earlier  _ our marriage  _ is verging on being too much for his poor heart to handle. To save face he just says, “It seems befitting if the Andrews name. Besides, it’s acceptable to put marshmallows in that kind of salad so you shouldn’t think any less of me.” 

 

Betty rolls her eyes before glancing around the room. “Do you see her? The manager?” 

 

Jughead follows her gaze, catching a movement on the far side of the room. “There! She’s just leaving through that door,” he whispers close to her ear. 

 

“Okay, I’m just going to… fix my lipstick,” she tells him conspiratorially, gesturing in the same direction. She leans up, pressing her lips against his cheek, lingering for a second too long. Jughead’s breath catches and then she’s hurrying away. 

  
  


Jughead feels a happy buzz thrumming through him that he knows isn’t from the few sips of champagne he’s had. Although this is slightly more expensive looking than the types of events he’s had to be in attendance of recently, he’d expected it to feel the same. He was waiting to feel explicitly like the imposter he is, and yet he hasn’t had time to. Yeah, he’s not supposed to be here and he wouldn’t say he’s ‘fitting in’ with the present company, but he’s not having a completely horrible time. Taking advantage of the platters of hor d'oeuvres and complimentary drinks have helped, but it’s more than that. 

 

Letting himself just  _ be himself _ with Betty, fooling around in this room full of people that had no clue who they were, or why they were here, or what they were doing, was kind of liberating. He hadn’t wasted a single second wondering what the guy in the thousand dollar suit thought of his lack of tie, or if they could sense the trailer park ingrained in him. The game of ‘we’re more middle class than you’ that Betty had started had taken care of that. 

 

With a jolt he realises that, however unintentionally, Jughead had never asked Archie, or JB, or anyone to come with him to any of his events, beyond the obligatory launch they’d insisted on being at. He’d been trying to keep a divide, as if by letting the two parts of his past and present collide they might crash and burn around him. 

 

But having Betty here? Betty had made him forget all that. Betty had made him comfortable. 

 

Maybe that was just the effect that Betty had always had on him. 

 

There’s a dull ache in his chest as he thinks about all the time they’d spent apart since graduation. Things could have been different. 

 

They can still be. 

 

Jughead’s just pulling himself out of his reverie when Betty blows back through the door, her hair flying over her shoulders as she rushes towards him. 

 

“I think something’s going wrong,” she tells him in a hushed tone, a kind of excitement coloring it. Jughead shakes his head for her to continue. “One of the employees was talking to her in the corridor by the staff entrance to the kitchen—don’t ask,” she dismisses his questions. “Saying that ‘they couldn’t find it’. Annoyingly, they didn’t say what, but the manager about  _ flipped _ , saying that they didn’t have long before Lodge Industries invested and they’d have to stop.” 

 

Betty’s gripping onto his arm as she talks animatedly, leaning in closer and closer. “Oh, she’s back!” she points over to the door where the manager, looking flustered, has just re-entered, clapping her hands to call everyone’s attention. 

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to find your seats in the dining room, dinner will be served momentarily,” she announces. 

 

“Let’s go,” Betty breathes as they begin to get caught up in the crowd, shifting them subtly to the edge. 

 

“What, where?” Jughead asks through barely moving lips. 

 

“Her office. Whatever they’ve been doing, they’ve been doing repeatedly. There’s got to be something, some kind of record, that she’s keeping, especially if more people are involved. It’s got to be in her office.” 

 

“What if it’s not?” Jughead questions as they break from the crowd, out into the main lobby. 

 

“Doesn’t hurt to look, and it might be our only chance. Keep an eye out,” Betty instructs as she ducks down by the doorknob, fishing pins out of her purse to work on the lock. 

 

Jughead snorts. “You’ve never looked more like Nancy Drew,” he comments, with something akin to admiration. “No, seriously,” he continues when she doesn’t answer. “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

 

“Shh,” she hushes him, focused on the lock. 

 

A few seconds of silence pass before he hears it. At first he isn’t sure, but the footsteps get louder and more purposeful the longer he waits. 

 

“Betts,” he says urgently, tapping on her shoulder. “I think someone’s coming!” 

 

“I’ve almost got it,” she dismisses, not moving from her crouched position. 

 

“And they’ve almost got  _ us _ , come on!” he pleads. 

 

“Two seconds, Jug!” 

 

The footsteps have reached the corner now. Jughead panics, knowing that they won’t be able to move away from the door unseen. Now, instead of an escape they need an alibi. 

 

Without another thought Jughead reaches down and lifts Betty up by her arms. She seems disconcerted by the action for a second. “What are you—”

 

The rest of her sentence doesn’t make it out. Jughead presses her against the wall next to the office door, first covering her body with his, then covering her lips with his own. 

 

.

.

.

  
  


Everything about this weekend feels a bit like a fever dream to Betty. Between seeing Jughead again and feeling comfortable enough to tell him how unsatisfied she is with her life and the not-unwelcome sparks of electricity that run up her spine every time their skin touches, Betty isn’t entirely sure she hasn’t imagined everything into existence. Their time together has unlocked something deep inside her that she never quite put words to before and that, in retrospect, she may have been actively ignoring all through her teenage years. 

 

Whatever it is, it’s completely unleashed by the time Jughead pulls her up by the arm and presses her against the wall—her skin positively  _ burns  _ under his touch and all the desires she nearly gave into when he did up the zipper of her dress are running wild. 

 

She lets out a muffled squeak of surprise against his lips and then her brain short circuits. Because Jughead Jones is kissing her and she  _ wants  _ him to be kissing her and his lips are warm against her own and the only piece of logic she can pull from her brain is that he’s smudging her lipstick—and that she simply doesn’t give a damn about it. 

 

His breath is hot against her own and when it trails away from her mouth to land under her jaw, against the column of her neck, she wants to combust. Betty comes crashing back to earth when Jughead briefly stops to whisper-hiss, “Watch for where she’s going,” and she remembers they’re in public and this is all just a show. Something indescribable cracks inside her and she squeezes her eyes shut against tears that well up on their own accord. Then they squeeze and roll back in pleasure when Jughead’s lips connect to the juncture between her neck and shoulder, his hands skimming up her waist and rubbing against the bare skin above where the fabric cuts on her back and  _ god,  _ she truly hopes there’s no way he isn’t feeling exactly the same as she is because it feels like he is trying  _ much _ too hard to make her moan. 

 

She does moan, ever so quietly, after he sucks lightly at her collarbone and Betty hears a muttered, “Jesus Christ these people,” and a clacking of heels; her eyes fly open to watch the manager stalking off in the opposite direction and wills the gears in her brain to start functioning again. The woman has a leatherbound notebook clutched under her arm. Lightbulbs go off her in brain and, mercifully, Betty stops focusing on where Jughead’s hands are—and she can  _ definitely  _ ignore how much she wants them to slip under the crisp fabric of her dress. Instead she wonders what could possibly be so important in that notebook that the manager has it in an iron grip. 

 

“We’re gonna lose her,” she whispers. Jughead stops, and straightens up. Betty wants to whine at the loss of contact. His face is flushed, so she can only imagine how red her own must be, but instead of looking as sheepish as she feels, he seems a little proud. 

 

“Okay, Nancy Drew, are we finishing the display of your lock-picking skills or are we following the sketchy resort manager?” He’s smiling as he looks at her, face alight with teasing her. It makes her feel fiesty to seem him like that, so she doesn’t exactly filter the next words out of her mouth. 

 

“Well, I don’t know,  _ Hardy Boy,  _ you seem to be the master of snooping diversions, so you tell me.” All Jughead does is chuckle in response and Betty realizes that somewhere along the way, she must have run her fingers through his hair because several locks of it are standing up in different directions. He raises an eyebrow at her, as if that is supposed to signify his answer. Their whispered conversation has only taken a few moments, but the manager is about to disappear down another hallway so Betty thinks on her feet. 

 

Grabbing Jughead’s hand from where it still rests on her waist, she yanks him down the hallway and in pursuit. She’s remarkably fast, even in her heels, and Jughead jogs a few steps to catch back up to her. When she stops suddenly at the corner, trying not to alert the woman of their presence, he collides with her slightly, solid muscle flexing against her mostly-bare back as he exhales in surprise. 

 

She tries desperately to maintain focus but now she’s distracted all over again. Incredibly flustered and doing her best not to turn around and start kissing Jughead again, she’d be lying if the decision to follow the manager wasn’t mostly so that Betty wasn’t alone in a room with him and her now-raging hormones. 

 

Her eyes still flicker down to his lips when she looks over her shoulder to explain. “Veronica trusts us, so I don’t think we need actual hard evidence. I’m sure she can manager that on her own. We may as well just eavesdrop for more details, but I don’t want her to hear us behind her.” Jughead stares back at her intently and nods before biting his lip to suppress a smile at the way she’s looking at him. (She knows her chest is still heaving, her blush still apparent, and her pupils definitely still wide with—she gulps—lust.  _ Lust  _ for Jughead. It’s a new feeling, but she isn’t mad about it.) 

 

Once again, Betty finds herself near the kitchen entrance to eavesdrop. The woman is farther across the room now, talking through an open exit door to an unseen second person. Now fully intent on her investigative tactics, she doesn’t even pause to think when Jughead’s hand presses at the small of her back to propel them closer to hear. 

 

“Listen, I don’t care how you get it done, but just  _ do it.  _ We were supposed to make bank on this final round, so just go do your damn job while I entertain all these rich assholes.” Whoever is outside speaks in response, but Betty can tell by the angle of the manager’s posture that she’s about to turn back around and come into the kitchen. And then run directly into Betty and Jughead. 

 

There’s enough time to hide, so Betty whirls on her heels, yanking Jughead behind her again and dashes into the nearest hiding spot that catches her eye—the walk-in freezer just to their left. 

 

“What the hell—” 

 

Betty shushes him abruptly by clapping a hand across his mouth. The door has already shut behind him, but voices coming from inside a closed freezer would still blow their cover. She arches an eyebrow at Jughead as she lowers her hand and whispers, “Somehow I don’t think the woman who already saw you giving me a hickey in a hallway is going to buy that we coincidentally migrated to the kitchen. So shut up unless you want to get caught.” 

 

His eyes flicker down to her neck and the wolfish grin from before is back. When he opens his mouth again, his voice is equally hushed. “I didn’t  _ actually  _ give you a hickey, Cooper.” 

 

Flustered again, but unwilling to give Jughead the upper hand, she snaps back, “Well you were halfway there.” 

 

It looks like he’s about to say something again, but then a slamming door echoes through the kitchen outside their hiding spot and faint footsteps retreat. They pause for a moment, staring at each other, but unsure of what is supposed to happen next. It’s Jughead who breaks the tense silence. “I stand by my chosen method of making it look like we weren’t breaking into a locked office,” he says with a grin as he turns to push the door back open. 

 

It doesn’t budge. Jughead jiggles the handle and leans his full weight into a push against the solid barrier. Still nothing. Betty hears a harsh “Damn it all,” before Jughead thunks his forehead on the door in frustration. 

 

“Um, Juggie,  _ please  _ tell me we are not locked inside this freezer?” 

 

There’s a hard bite of sarcasm in his answer that makes her go quiet. “Betts,  _ please  _ don’t make a liar out of me.” 

 

“Oh,” she says softly. More to herself in disbelief than to room—freezer—at large, she says, “We probably shouldn’t have let it close all the way.” 

 

When Jughead rounds on her and snaps, “Well my apologies for the utter lack of cat-like reflexes, Betty, but you’re the one who chose a freezer as a hiding spot.” Betty flinches and bites her bottom lip to stop it from visibly trembling. For the second time in what could only be five minutes, her eyes are full of tears, hormones at an all time high. 

 

She feels like an idiot; what is she playing at, trying to be amateur detective like she isn’t a grown-ass woman who is supposed to have her life together. She shouldn’t be getting herself into situations that involve getting locked in a freezer, no matter how much fun the lead up was. 

 

(Betty thinks, though, that if she’s destined to a life of shitty PR job after shitty PR job where she has to plaster her Cooper-approved smile on to grin and bear it, it wouldn’t be so bad, as long as Jughead were along for the ride. They were pretending just as much at the dinner as she does at work on the daily basis, but playacting a ridiculous, wealthy married couple didn’t exhaust her like her job did. It didn’t make her dread each passing minute or contemplate what might happen if she just dropped off the face of the earth. Instead she’d felt light and free, a glimpse of herself from childhood days long past. But still, then she’d gone and screwed it all up and now she’s locked in a freezer with a pissed-off childhood friend. Par for the course, she supposes.) 

 

This time she lets the tears spill over and the dam of emotional frustration bursts open after spending weeks, if not months, threatening to crack. At the sound of her strangled sob, Jughead wildly backtracks, worry flashing over his face. “Ah, Jesus, Betty come on, I’m sorry. I’m a jackass, it’s not your fault we’re in this mess.” 

 

“It  _ is,  _ though,” she cries, folding in on herself as she leans against the cold metal shelving. “I always screw  _ everything up.  _ I am never, ever what people want of me and I’m not even what I want of myself. I don’t even know what the  _ hell  _ I should even be doing. I’m a useless PR rep, which essentially means I put on a show every day like I’m a scared teenager living at home. I’m making a living on the fake, perfect Cooper smile. How did I fuck up my path that badly? I wreck everything.”

 

The end of Betty’s outburst is punctuated by a violent shiver as the cold of the shelves bites into her skin and it only makes her cry harder. Instinctually, as though she is suddenly seventeen and infinitely fragile again, her hands curl into fists, the freshly filed edges of her nails press hard into her palms. In a flash, Jughead is in front of her, shrugging off his suit jacket and pulling her forward to drape it over her shoulders. 

 

“Betty,” he cups her face in his hands to move her gaze up to him. One of his thumbs gently swipes at some of the tears racing down her cheeks. “Betty, not to be a jackass again, but if you think you are at all responsible for screwing anything up, then you are a lot stupider than I ever gave you credit for.” 

 

Her sobs subside somewhat at his words, but the tears continue to stream down her face—the overwhelming emotions were simply too much for Betty to keep at bay. Striving for his usual humor, Jughead brushes away more tears and smirks, “You know, it’s cold enough that your tears are probably going to freeze and that’s gonna suck pretty hard, so maybe cut that out.” 

 

Betty chokes out a laugh, a weak smile moving her face beneath his palms. One of the many emotions she’s feeling is confusion at the burning warmth she feels whenever Jughead’s hands are on her skin, but right now the heat of his palm is a welcome distraction. She leans into it, breathes heavily, and then allows herself to lay herself against Jughead’s chest. If the action startles him, he doesn’t give any indication, instead wrapping his arms around her for the second time that day. When Betty feels him press his lips softly into the crown of her head, some of the pent up anxiety in her chest abates and she flexes her fingers to relieve them of tension. 

 

One of his hands finds her own and helps to uncurl her fist, lacing his fingers through hers and gripping it tight. The action itself is so small but brings Betty the distinct feeling of safety. (She can feel the smooth metal of his fake wedding ring against her own skin and somehow, instead of reminding her of the forlorn ache in her chest, it makes her smile.) 

 

Voice muffled by the hug— _ god,  _ his arms are strong—Betty says, “You know you’ve got this comforting husband schtick down pretty well.” 

 

Jughead chuckles and releases his hold a little so he can meet her eyes. “Nothing but love for my dog-handbag-designer wife.” The words themselves are teasing, but the tone is something more serious that makes her stomach clench in happy nerves. The realization of how much she wants him to lean down and kiss her sweeps over her. It may be her mind playing tricks on her, but Betty thinks Jughead may want the same. 

 

Just as suddenly as the desire in his eyes appeared, Jughead blinks and clears his throat and it’s gone. He rubs her back reassuringly, and Betty decides that’s good enough for now. 

 

“For real, though, Betts. You haven’t screwed anything up. Our twenties are supposed to be about figuring out what the hell to do while we still have time left.” They break to give each other enough space to look at each other while talking, but remain close enough to hold onto to their body heat. “There are worse things than being in a soul-sucking job. Like being so self-loathing that you’re afraid to accept your modicum of success because the kid from the wrong side of the tracks doesn’t deserve anything good. Or… y’know, being locked in a freezer, for instance.” He gives her a rueful smile that masks the heavy truth of the secret he just shared with her. 

 

“Jug,” she breathes. “You deserve  _ nothing  _ but good things.” Betty squeezes the hand still entwined with her own and glances down at the ring on his finger before tracing it lightly. “You are the kindest person I have ever met. You deserve everything the world has to offer.” She holds back from saying what else is on the tip of her tongue:  _ you deserve someone real to love, I should have never let our friendship fade away, maybe one day we’ll both get the happiness we deserve. Maybe it’ll come in the form of us, together.  _

 

He opens his mouth, as though to say something, but it changes to a strangled sort of scoff. Betty desperately wants to press him, find out what he keeps trying to say to her but won’t. 

 

For a few brief moments they hold eye contact, neither willing to say what they’re each biting back. When Betty shudders from the cold once more, the heated gaze breaks. “Shit, yeah,” says Jughead. “It’s cold in here.” He turns back to the door while Betty hugs his jacket closer around her, breathing in the smell of peppermint and something spicy, and ever-so-faintly of coffee. Even without his grasp, the reminder of him keeps her calm. 

 

Across the freezer, Jughead pounds his fists heavily against the door. “Hello! Any-fucking-body out there! HELLO!” He’s been yelling for a few minutes, Betty about to rest a hand on his shoulder to tell him to rest, when the door swings open. A very confused member of the kitchen staff stands in the doorway. 

 

Everybody blinks at each other before Betty rushes to Jughead’s side, giggling. “We had a little too much champagne and went hunting for ice cream. Thank you so much!” Catching on, Jughead grips her waist tightly and they push past the man before he can ask any questions. He breaks into a jog across the kitchen, dragging Betty along behind him until she’s giggling for real as she struggles to catch up. 

 

It’s apparently infectious because as soon as they reach an elevator, the pair are laughing uncontrollably. They don’t stop holding hands all the way back to their room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're so happy everyone is enjoying this little trope-fest so far! 
> 
> as always, please leave a comment! the authors pretend we don't need validation, but it's actually our lifeblood.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please, please leave comments & reviews - they are our lifeblood and we thrive on validation!


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